•nia 


IN    THE    CAGE 


BY 


HENRY    JAMES 


HERBERT  S.  STONE  £r  COMPANY 

CHICAGO  fir  NEW  YORK 

MDCCCXCVIII 


COPYRIGHT  1898,  BY 
HERBERT   S.   STONE  &  CO. 


In  The  Cage 


i 

It  had  occurred  to  her  early  that  in  her 
position — that  of  a  young  person  spending, 
in  framed  and  wired  confinement,  the  life  of 
a  guineapig  or  a  magpie — she  should  know  a 
great  many  persons  without  their  recognis 
ing  the  acquaintance.  That  made  it  an 
emotion  the  more  lively — though  singularly 
rare  and  always,  even  then,  with  opportu 
nity  still  very  much  smothered — to  see  any 
one  come  in  whom  she  knew,  as  she  called 
it,  outside,  and  who  could  add  something  to 
the  poor  identity  of  her  function.  Her  func 
tion  was  to  sit  there  with  two  young  men — 
the  other  telegraphist  and  the  counter-clerk ; 


2  IN  THE  CAGE 

to  mind  the  "sounder,"  which  was  always 
going,  to  dole  out  stamps  and  postal  orders, 
weigh  letters,  answer  stupid  questions,  give 
difficult  change  and,  more  than  anything 
else,  count  words  as  numberless  as  the  sands 
of  the  sea,  the  words  of  the  telegrams  thrust, 
from  morning  to  night,  through  the  gap  left 
in  the  high  lattice,  across  the  encumbered 
shelf  that  her  forearm  ached  with  rubbing. 
This  transparent  screen  fenced  out  or  fenced 
in,  according  to  the  side  of  the  narrow 
counter  on  which  the  human  lot  was  cast,  the 
duskiest  corner  of  a  shop  pervaded  not  a  lit 
tle,  in  winter,  by  the  poison  of  perpetual  gas 
and  at  all  times  by  the  presence  of  hams, 
cheese,  dried  fish,  soap,  varnish,  paraffin  and 
other  solids  and  fluids  that  she  came  to  know 
perfectly  by  their  smells  without  consenting 
to  know  them  by  their  names. 

The  barrier  that  divided  the  little  post- 
and-telegraph-office  from  the  grocery  was  a 
frail  structure  of  wood  and  wire;  but  the 
social,  the  professional  separation  was  a  gulf 
that  fortune,  by  a  stroke  quite  remarkable, 


IN  THE  CAGE  3 

had  spared  her  the  necessity  of  contributing 
at  all  publicly  to  bridge.  When  Mr.  Cocker's 
young  men  stepped  over  from  behind  the 
other  counter  to  change  a  five-pound  note — 
and  Mr.  Cocker's  situation,  with  the  cream 
of  the  "Court  Guide"  and  the  dearest  fur 
nished  apartments,  Simpkin's,  Ladle's, 
Thrupp's,  just  round  the  corner,  was  so 
select  that  his  place  was  quite  pervaded  by 
the  crisp  rustle  of  these  emblems — she 
pushed  out  the  sovereigns  as  if  the  applicant 
were  no  more  to  her  than  one  of  the  mo 
mentary  appearances  in  the  great  proces 
sion  ;  and  this  perhaps  all  the  more  from  the 
very  fact  of  the  connection — only  recognised 
outside  indeed — to  which  she  had  lent  her 
self  with  ridiculous  inconsequence.  She 
recognised  the  others  the  less  because  she 
had  at  last  so  unreservedly,  so  irredeemably 
recognised  Mr.  Mudge.  But  she  was  a  little 
ashamed,  none  the  less,  of  having  to  admit 
to  herself  that  Mr.  Mudge' s  removal  to  a 
higher  sphere — to  a  more  commanding  posi 
tion,  that  is,  though  to  a  much  lower  neigh- 


4  IN  THE  CAGE 

borhood — would  have  been  described  still 
better  as  a  luxury  than  as  the  simplification 
that  she  contented  herself  with  calling  it. 
He  had,  at  any  rate,  ceased  to  be  all  day 
long  in  her  eyes,  and  this  left  something  a 
little  fresh  for  them  to  rest  on  of  a  Sunday. 
During  the  three  months  that  he  had 
remained  at  Cocker's  after  her  consent  to 
their  engagement,  she  had  often  asked  her 
self  what  it  was  that  marriage  would  be  able 
to  add  to  a  familiarity  so  final.  Opposite 
there,  behind  the  counter  of  which  his 
superior  stature,  his  whiter  apron,  his  more 
clustering  curls  and  more  present,  too 
present,  h's  had  been  for  a  couple  of  years 
the  principal  ornament,  he  had  moved  to  and 
fro  before  her  as  on  the  small  sanded  floor 
of  their  contracted  future.  She  was  con 
scious  now  of  the  improvement  of  not  having 
to  take  her  present  and  her  future  at  once. 
They  were  about  as  much  as  she  could 
manage  when  taken  separate. 

She  had,  none  the  less,  to  give  her  mind 
steadily   to   what    Mr.     Mudge    had    again 


IN  THE  CAGE  5 

written  her  about,  the  idea  of  her  applying 
for  a  transfer  to  an  office  quite  similar — she 
couldn't  yet  hope  for  a  place  in  a  bigger — 
under  the  very  roof  where  he  was  foreman, 
so  that,  dangled  before  her  every  minute  of 
the  day,  he  should  see  her,  as  he  called  it, 
"hourly,"  and  in  a  part,  the  far  N.  W. 
district,  where,  with  her  mother,  she  would 
save,  on  their  two  rooms  alone,  nearly  three 
shillings.  It  would  be  far  from  dazzling  to 
exchange  Mayfair  for  Chalk  Farm,  and  it 
was  something  of  a  predicament  that  he  so 
kept  at  her;  still,  it  was  nothing  to  the  old 
predicaments,  those  of  the  early  times  of 
their  great  misery,  her  own,  her  mother's 
and  her  elder  sister's — the  last  of  whom  had 
succumbed  to  all  but  absolute  want  when, 
as  conscious,  incredulous  ladies,  suddenly 
bereaved,  betrayed,  overwhelmed,  they  had 
slipped  faster  and  faster  down  the  steep 
slope  at  the  bottom  of  which  she  alone  had 
rebounded.  Her  mother  had  never  re 
bounded  any  more  at  the  bottom  than  on 
the  way;  had  only  rumbled  and  grumbled 


6  IN  THE  CAGE 

down  and  down,  making,  in  respect  of  caps 
and  conversation,  no  effort  whatever,  and 
too  often,  alas,  smelling  of  whisky. 


II 

It  was  always  rather  quiet  at  Cocker's 
while  the  contingent  from  Ladle's  and 
Thrupp's  and  all  the  other  great  places 
were  at  luncheon,  or,  as  the  young  men  used 
vulgarly  to  say,  while  the  animals  were 
feeding.  She  had  forty  minutes  in  advance 
of  this  to  go  home  for  her  own  dinner ;  and 
when  she  came  back,  and  one  of  the  young 
men  took  his  turn,  there  was  often  half  an 
hour  during  which  she  could  pull  out  a  bit  of 
work  or  a  book — a  book  from  the  place  where 
she  borrowed  novels,  very  greasy,  in  fine 
print  and  all  about  fine  folks,  at  a  ha'penny 
a  day.  This  sacred  pause  was  one  of  the 
numerous  ways  in  which  the  establishment 
kept  its  finger  on  the  pulse  of  fashion  and 
fell  into  the  rhythm  of  the  larger  life.  It 
had  something  to  do,  one  day,  with  the  par 
ticular  vividness  marking  the  advent  of  a 
lady  whose  meals  were  apparently  irregular, 


8  IN  THE  CAGE 

yet  whom  she  was  destined,  she  afterwards 
found,  not  to  forget.  The  girl  was  blaste; 
nothing  could  belong  more,  as  she  perfectly 
knew,  to  the  intense  publicity  of  her  pro 
fession  ;  but  she  had  a  whimsical  mind  and 
wonderful  nerves ;  she  was  subject,  in  short, 
to  sudden  flickers  of  antipathy  and  sympathy, 
red  gleams  in  the  grey,  fitful  awakings  and 
followings,  odd  caprices  of  curiosity.  She 
had  a  friend  who  had  invented  a  new  career 
for  women — that  of  being  in  and  out  of 
people's  houses  to  look  after  the  flowers. 
Mrs.  Jordan  had  a  manner  of  her  own  of 
sounding  this  allusion;  "the  flowers,"  on 
her  lips,  were,  in  happy  homes,  as  usual  as 
the  coals  or  the  daily  papers.  She  took 
charge  of  them,  at  any  rate,  in  all  the  rooms, 
at  so  much  a  month,  and  people  were  quickly 
finding  out  what  it  was  to  make  over  this 
delicate  duty  to  the  widow  of  a  clergyman. 
The  widow,  on  her  side,  dilating  on  the 
initiations  thus  opened  up  to  her,  had  been 
splendid  to  her  young  friend  over  the  way 
she  was  made  free  of  the  greatest  houses, 


IN  THE  CAGE  9 

the  way,  especially  when  she  did  the  dinner- 
tables,  set  out  so  often  for  twenty,  she  felt 
that  a  single  step  more  would  socially,  would 
absolutely,  introduce  her.  On  its  being 
asked  of  her,  then,  if  she  circulated  only  in 
a  sort  of  tropical  solitude,  with  the  upper 
servants  for  picturesque  natives,  and  on  her 
having  to  assent  to  this  glance  at  her  limita 
tions,  she  had  found  a  reply  to  the  girl's 
invidious  question.  "You've  no  imagination, 
my  dear!" — that  was  because  the  social  door 
might  at  any  moment  open  so  wide. 

Our  young  lady  had  not  taken  up  the 
charge,  had  dealt  with  it  good-humouredly, 
just  because  she  knew  so  well  what  to  think 
of  it.  It  was  at  once  one  of  her  most  cher 
ished  complaints  and  most  secret  supports 
that  people  didn't  understand  her,  and  it 
was  accordingly  a  matter  of  indifference  to 
her  that  Mrs.  Jordan  shouldn't;  even  though 
Mrs.  Jordan,  handed  down  from  their  early 
twilight  gentility  and  also  the  victim  of 
reverses,  was  the  only  member  of  her  circle 
in  whom  she  recognized  an  equal.  She  was 


io  IN  THE  CAGE 

perfectly  aware  that  her  imaginative  life  was 
the  life  in  which  she  spent  most  of  her  time ; 
and  she  would  have  been  ready,  had  it  been 
at  all  worth  while,  to  contend  that,  since  her 
outward  occupation  didn't  kill  it,  it  must  be 
strong  indeed.  Combinations  of  flowers  and 
green  stuff  forsooth?  What  she  could  handle 
freely,  she  said  to  herself,  was  combinations 
of  men  and  women.  The  only  weakness  in 
her  faculty  came  from  the  positive  abund 
ance  of  her  contact  with  the  human  herd; 
this  was  so  constant,  had  the  effect  of  becom 
ing  so  cheap,  that  there  were  long  stretches 
in  which  inspiration,  divination  and  interest, 
quite  dropped.  The  great  thing  was  the 
flashes,  the  quick  revivals,  absolute  accidents 
all  and  neither  to  be  counted  on  nor  to  be 
resisted.  Some  one  had  only  sometimes  to 
put  in  a  penny  for»a  stamp,  and  the  whole 
thing  was  upon  her.  She  was  so  absurdly 
constructed  that  these  were  literally  the 
moments  that  made  up — made  up  for  the 
long  stiffness  of  sitting  there  in  the  stocks, 
made  up  for  the  cunning  hostility  of  Mr. 


IN  THE  CAGE  n 

Buckton  and  the  importunate  sympathy  of 
the  counter-clerk,  made  up  for  the  daily, 
deadly,  flourishy  letter  from  Mr.  Mudge, 
made  up  even  for  the  most  haunting  of  her 
worries,  the  rage  at  moments  of  not  know 
ing  how  her  mother  did  "get  it." 

She  had  surrendered  herself  moreover,  of 
late,  to  a  certain  expansion  of  her  conscious 
ness;  something  that  seemed  perhaps  vul 
garly  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that,  as  the 
blast  of  the  season  roared  louder  and  the 
waves  of  fashion  tossed  their  spray  further 
over  the  counter,  there  were  more  impres 
sions  to  be  gathered  and  really — for  it  came 
to  that — more  life  to  be  led.  Definite,  at 
any  rate,  it  was  that  by  the  time  May  was 
well  started  the  kind  of  company  she  kept 
at  Cocker's  had  begun  to  strike  her  as  a 
reason — a  reason  she  might  almost  put  for 
ward  for  a  policy  of  procrastination.  It 
sounded  silly,  of  course,  as  yet,  to  plead 
such  a  motive,  especially  as  the  fascination 
of  the  place  was,  after  all,  a  sort  of  torment. 
But  she  liked  her  torment;  it  was  a  torment 


12  IN  THE  CAGE 

she  should  miss  at  Chalk  Farm.  She  was 
ingenious  and  uncandid,  therefore,  about 
leaving  the  breadth  of  London  a  little  longer 
between  herself  and  that  austerity.  If  she 
had  not  quite  the  courage,  in  short,  to  say 
to  Mr.  Mudge  that  her  actual  chance  for  a 
play  of  mind  was  worth,  any  week,  the  three 
shillings  he  desired  to  help  her  to  save,  she 
yet  saw  something  happen  in  the  course  of 
the  month  that,  in  her  heart  of  hearts  at 
least,  answered  the  subtle  question.  This 
was  connected  precisely  with  the  appearance 
of  the  memorable  lady. 


Ill 

She  pushed  in  three  bescribbled  forms 
which  the  girl's  hand  was  quick  to  appropri 
ate,  Mr.  Buckton  having  so  frequent  a  per 
verse  instinct  for  catching  first  any  eye  that 
promised  the  sort  of  entertainment  with 
which  she  had  her  peculiar  affinity.  The 
amusements  of  captives  are  full  of  a  desper 
ate  contrivance,  and  one  of  our  young 
friend's  ha 'penny  worths  had  been  the 
charming  tale  of  Picciola.  It  was  of  course 
the  law  of  the  place  that  they  were  never  to 
take  no  notice,  as  Mr.  Buckton  said,  whom 
they  served ;  but  this  also  never  prevented, 
certainly  on  the  same  gentleman's  own  part, 
what  he  was  fond  of  describing  as  the  under 
hand  game.  Both  her  companions,  for  that 
matter,  made  no  secret  of  the  number  of 
favourites  they  had  among  the  ladies ;  sweet 
familiarities  in  spite  of  which  she  had 

repeatedly  caught  each  of  them  in  stupid- 
13 


14  IN  THE  CAGE 

ities  and  mistakes,  confusions  of  identity  and 
lapses  of  observation  that  never  failed  to 
remind  her  how  the  cleverness  of  men  ended 
where  the  cleverness  of  women  began. 
"Marguerite,  Regent  Street.  Try  on  at  six. 
All  Spanish  lace.  Pearls.  The  full  length. ' ' 
That  was  the  first;  it  had  no  signature. 
"Lady  Agnes  Orme,  Hyde  Park  Place. 
Impossible  to-night,  dining  Haddon.  Opera 
to-morrow,  promised  Fritz,  but  could  do  play 
Wednesday.  Will  try  Haddon  for  Savoy, 
and  anything  in  the  world  you  like,  if  you 
can  get  Gussy.  Sunday,  Montenero.  Sit 
Mason  Monday,  Tuesday.  Marguerite  awful. 
Cissy."  That  was  the  second.  The  third, 
the  girl  noted  when  she  took  it,  was  on  a 
foreign  form:  "Everard,  Hotel  Brighton, 
Paris.  Only  understand  and  believe.  22nd 
to  26th,  and  certainly  8th  and  gth.  Perhaps 
others.  Come.  Mary." 

Mary  was  very  handsome,  the  handsomest 
woman,  she  felt  in  a  moment,  she  had  ever 
seen — or  perhaps  it  was  only  Cissy.  Per 
haps  it  was  both,  for  she  had  seen  stranger 


IN  THE  CAGE  15 

things  than  that — ladies  wiring  to  different 
persons  under  different  names.  She  had 
seen  all  sorts  of  things  and  pieced  together 
all  sorts  of  mysteries.  There  had  once  been 
one — not  long  before — who,  without  wink 
ing,  sent  off  five  over  five  different  signa 
tures.  Perhaps  these  represented  five 
different  friends  who  had  asked  her — all 
women,  just  as  perhaps  now  Mary  and  Cissy, 
or  one  or  other  of  them,  were  wiring  by 
deputy.  Sometimes  she  put  in  too  much — 
too  much  of  her  own  sense;  sometimes 
she  put  in  too  little ;  and  in  either  case  this 
often  came  round  to  her  afterwards,  for  she 
had  an  extraordinary  way  of  keeping  clues. 
When  she  noticed,  she  noticed;  that  was 
what  it  came  to.  There  were  days  and  days, 
there  were  weeks  sometimes,  of  vacancy. 
This  arose  often  from  Mr.  Buckton's  devil 
ish  and  successful  subterfuges  for  keeping 
her  at  the  sounder  whenever  it  looked  as  if 
anything  might  amuse ;  the  sounder,  which 
it  was  equally  his  business  to  mind,  being 
the  innermost  cell  of  captivity,  a  cage  within 


16  IN  THE  CAGE 

the  cage,  fenced  off  from  the  rest  by  a  frame 
of  ground  glass.  The  counter-clerk  would 
have  played  into  her  hands;  but  the  counter- 
clerk  was  really  reduced  to  idiocy  by  the 
effect  of  his  passion  for  her.  She  flattered 
herself  moreover,  nobly,  that  with  the  un 
pleasant  conspicuity  of  this  passion  she 
would  never  have  consented  to  be  obliged  to 
him.  The  most  she  would  ever  do  would 
be  always  to  shove  off  on  him  whenever  she 
could  the  registration  of  letters,  a  job  she 
happened  particularly  to  loathe.  After  the 
long  stupors,  at  all  events,  there  almost 
always  suddenly  would  come  a  sharp  taste 
of  something;  it  was  in  her  mouth  before 
she  knew  it ;  it  was  in  her  mouth  now. 

To  Cissy,  to  Mary,  whichever  it  was,  she 
found  her  curiosity  going  out  with  a  rush, 
a  mute  effusion  that  floated  back  to  her,  like 
a  returning  tide,  the  living  colour  and  splen 
dour  of  the  beautiful  head,  the  light  of  eyes 
that 'seemed  to  reflect  such  utterly  other 
things  than  the  mean  things  actually  before 
them;  and,  above  all,  the  high,  curt  con- 


IN  THE  CAGE  17 

sideration  of  a  manner  that,  even  at  bad 
moments,  was  a  magnificent  habit  and  of 
the  very  essence  of  the  innumerable  things — 
her  beauty,  her  birth,  her  father  and  mother, 
her  cousins  and  all  her  ancestors — that  its 
possessor  couldn't  have  got  rid  of  if  she  had 
wished.  How  did  our  obscure  little  public 
servant  know  that,  for  the  lady  of  the  tele 
grams,  this  was  a  bad  moment?  How  did 
she  guess  all  sorts  of  impossible  things,  such 
as,  almost  on  the  Very  spot,  the  presence  of 
drama,  at  a  critical  stage,  and  the  nature  of 
the  tie  with  the  gentleman  at  the  Hotel 
Brighton?  More  than  ever  before  it  floated 
to  her  through  the  bars  of  the  cage  that  this 
at  last  was  the  high  reality,  the  bristling 
truth  that  she  had  hitherto  only  patched  up 
and  eked  out — one  of  the  creatures,  in  fine, 
in  whom  all  the  conditions  for  happiness 
actually  met  and  who,  in  the  air  they  made, 
bloomed  with  an  unwitting  insolence.  What 
came  home  to  the  girl  was  the  way  the 
insolence  was  tempered  by  something  that 
was  equally  a  part  of  the  distinguished  life, 


i8  IN  THE  CAGE 

the  custom  of  a  flower-like  bend  to  the  less 
fortunate — a  dropped  fragrance,  a  mere 
quick  breath,  but  which  in  fact  pervaded  and 
lingered.  The  apparition  was  very  young, 
but  certainly  married,  and  our  fatigued 
friend  had  a  sufficient  store  of  mythological 
comparison  to  recognise  the  port  of  Juno. 
Marguerite  might  be  "awful,"  but  she  knew 
how  to  dress  a  goddess. 

Pearls  and  Spanish  lace — she  herself,  with 
assurance,  could  see  them,  and  the  "full 
length"  too,  and  also  red  velvet  bows,  which, 
disposed  on  the  lace  in  a  particular  manner 
(she  could  have  placed  them  with  the  turn 
of  a  hand),  were  of  course  to  adorn  the  front 
of  a  black  brocade  that  would  be  like  a  dress 
in  a  picture.  However,  neither  Marguerite, 
nor  Lady  Agnes,  nor  Haddon,  nor  Fritz,  nor 
Gussy  were  what  the  wearer  of  this  garment 
had  really  come  in  for.  She  had  come  in 
for  Everard — and  that  was  doubtless  not  his 
true  name  either.  If  our  young  lady  had 
never  taken  such  jumps  before,  it  was 
simply  that  she  had  never  before  been  so 


IN  THE  CAGE  19 

affected.  She  went  all  the  way.  Mary  and 
Cissy  had  been  round  together,  in  their 
single  superb  person,  to  see  him — he  must 
live  round  the  corner;  they  had  found  that, 
in  consequence  of  something  they  had  come, 
precisely,  to  make  up  for  or  to  have  another 
scene  about,  he  had  gone  off — gone  off  just 
on  purpose  to  make  them  feel  it;  on  which 
they  had  come  together  to  Cocker's  as  to 
the  nearest  place;  where  they  had  put  in 
the  three  forms  partly  in  order  not  to  put  in 
the  one  alone.  The  two  others,  in  a  manner, 
covered  it,  muffled  it,  passed  it  off.  Oh  yes, 
she  went  all  the  way,  and  this  was  a  speci 
men  of  how  she  often  went.  She  would 
know  the  hand  again  any  time.  It  was  as 
handsome  and  as  everything  else  as  the 
woman  herself.  The  woman  herself  had,  on 
learning  his  flight,  pushed  past  Everard's 
servant  and  into  his  room ;  she  had  written 
her  missive  at  his  table  and  with  his  pen. 
All  this,  every  inch  of  it,  came  in  the  waft 
that  she  blew  through  and  left  behind  her, 
the  influence  that,  as  I  have  said,  lingered. 


20  IN  THE  CAGE 

And  among  the  things  the  girl  was  sure 
of,  happily,  was  that  she  should  see  her 
again. 


IV 

She  saw  her  in  fact,  and  only  ten  days 
later;  but  this  time  she  was  not  alone,  and 
that  was  exactly  a  part  of  the  luck  of  it. 
Being  clever  enough  to  know  through  what 
possibilities  it  could  range,  our  young  lady 
had  ever  since  had  in  her  mind  a  dozen  con 
flicting  theories  about  Everard's  type;  as  to 
which,  the  instant  they  came  into  the  place, 
she  felt  the  point  settled  with  a  thump  that 
seemed  somehow  addressed  straight  to  her 
heart.  That  organ  literally  beat  faster  at 
the  approach  of  the  gentleman  who  was  this 
time  with  Cissy  and  who,  as  seen  from 
within  the  cage,  became  on  the  spot  the 
happiest  of  the  happy  circumstances  with 
which  her  mind  had  invested  the  friend  of 
Fritz  and  Gussy.  He  was  a  very  happy  cir 
cumstance  indeed  as,  with  his  cigarette  in 
his  lips  and  his  broken  familiar  talk  caught 
by  his  companions,  he  put  down  the  half- 


22  IN  THE  CAGE 

dozen  telegrams  which  it  would  take  them 
together  some  minutes  to  despatch.  And 
here  it  occurred,  oddly  enough,  that  if, 
shortly  before,  the  girl's  interest  in  his  com 
panion  had  sharpened  her  sense  for  the 
messages  then  transmitted,  her  immediate 
vision  of  himself  had  the  effect,  while  she 
counted  his  seventy  words,  of  preventing 
intelligibility.  His  words  were  mere  num 
bers,  they  told  her  nothing  whatever;  and 
after  he  had  gone  she  was  in  possession  of 
no  name,  of  no  address,  of  no  meaning,  of 
nothing  but  a  vague,  sweet  sound  and  an 
immense  impression.  He  had  been  there 
but  five  minutes,  he  had  smoked  in  her  face, 
and,  busy  with  his  telegrams,  with  the  tap 
ping  pencil  and  the  conscious  danger,  the 
odious  betrayal  that  would  come  from  a  mis 
take,  she  had  had  no  wandering  glances  nor 
roundabout  arts  to  spare.  Yet  she  had  taken 
him  in ;  she  knew  everything ;  she  had  made 
up  her  mind. 

He  had  come  back  from  Paris;  everything 
was  rearranged ;  the  pair  were  again  shoulder 


IN  THE  CAGE  23 

to  shoulder  in  their  high  encounter  with  life, 
their  large  and  complicated  game.  The  fine, 
soundless  pulse  of  this  game  was  in  the  air 
for  our  young  woman  while  they  remained 
in  the  shop.  While  they  remained?  They 
remained  all  day,  their  presence  continued 
and  abode  with  her,  was  in  everything  she 
did  till  nightfall,  in  the  thousands  of  other 
words  she  counted,  she  transmitted,  in  all 
the  stamps  she  detached  and  the  letters  she 
weighed  and  the  change  she  gave,  equally 
unconscious  and  unerring  in  each  of  these 
particulars,  and  not,  as  the  run  on  the  little 
office  thickened  with  the  afternoon  hours, 
looking  up  at  a  single  ugly  face  in  the  long 
sequence,  nor  really  hearing  the  stupid 
questions  that  she  patiently  and  perfectly 
answered.  All  patience  was  possible  now, 
and  all  questions  stupid  after  his — all  faces 
ugly.  She  had  been  sure  she  should  see  the 
lady  again ;  and  even  now  she  should  per 
haps,  she  should  probably,  see  her  often. 
But  for  him  it  was  totally  different;  she 
should  never,  never  see  him.  She  wanted 


24  IN  THE  CAGE 

it  too  much.  There  was  a  kind  of  wanting 
that  helped — she  had  arrived,  with  her  rich 
exp  rience,  at  that  generalisation ;  and  there 
was  another  kind  that  was  fatal.  It  was 
this  time  the  fatal  kind ;  it  would  prevent. 

Well,  she  saw  him  the  very  next  day,  and 
on  this  second  occasion  it  was  quite  differ 
ent;  the  sense  of  every  syllable  he  de 
spatched  was  fiercely  distinct;  she  indeed 
felt  her  progressive  pencil,  dabbing  as  if 
with  a  quick  caress  the  marks  of  his  own, 
put  life  into  every  stroke.  He  was  there  a 
long  time — had  not  brought  his  forms  filled 
out,  but  worked  them  off  in  a  nook  on  the 
counter;  and  there  were  other  people  as 
well — a  changing,  pushing  cluster,  with 
every  one  to  mind  at  once  and  endless  right 
change  to  make  and  information  to  produce. 
But  she  kept  hold  of  him  throughout;  she 
continued,  for  herself,  in  a  relation  with 
him  as  close  as  that  in  which,  behind  the 
hated  ground  glass,  Mr.  Buckton  luckily  con 
tinued  with  the  sounder.  This  morning 
everything  changed,  but  with  a  kind  of 


IN  THE  CAGE  25 

dreariness  too ;  she  had  to  swallow  the  rebuff 
to  her  theory  about  fatal  desires,  which  she 
did  without  confusion  and  indeed  with  abso 
lute  levity;  yet  if  it  was  now  flagrant  that 
he  did  live  close  at  hand — at  Park  Cham 
bers — and  belonged  supremely  to  the  class 
that  wired  everything,  even  their  expensive 
feelings  (so  that,  as  he  never  wrote,  his 
correspondence  cost  him  weekly  pounds 
and  pounds,  and  he  might  be  in  and  out  five 
times  a  day,)  there  was,  all  the  same, 
involved  in  the  prospect,  and  by  reason  of 
its  positive  excess  of  light,  a  perverse  mel 
ancholy,  almost  a  misery.  This  was  rapidly 
to  give  it  a  place  in  an  order  of  feelings  on 
which  I  shall  presently  touch. 

Meanwhile,  for  a  month,  he  was  very  con 
stant.  Cissy,  Mary,  never  reappeared  with 
him ;  he  was  always  either  alone  or  accom 
panied  only  by  some  gentleman  who  was 
lost  in  the  blaze  of  his  glory.  There  was 
another  sense,  however — and  indeed  there 
was  more  than  one — in  which  she  mostly 
found  herself  counting  in  the  splendid 


26  IN  THE  CAGE 

creature  with  whom  she  had  originally  con 
nected  him.  He  addressed  this  correspond 
ent  neither  as  Mary  nor  as  Cissy;  but  the 
girl  was  sure  of  whom  it  was,  in  Eaton 
Square,  that  he  was  perpetually  wiring  to — 
and  so  irreproachably! — as  Lady  Bradeen. 
Lady  Bradeen  was  Cissy,  Lady  Bradeen  was 
Mary,  Lady  Bradeen  was  the  friend  of  Fritz 
and  of  Gussy,  the  customer  of  Marguerite 
and  the  close  ally,  in  short  (as  was  ideally 
right,  only  the  girl  had  not  yet  found  a 
descriptive  term  that  was,)  of  the  most  mag 
nificent  of  men.  Nothing  could  equal  the 
frequency  and  variety  of  his  communica 
tions  to  her  ladyship  but  their  extraordinary, 
their  abysmal  propriety.  It  was  just  the 
talk,  so  profuse  sometimes  that  she  wondered 
what  was  left  for  their  real  meetings,  of  the 
happiest  people  in  the  world.  Their  real 
meetings  must  have  been  constant,  for  half 
of  it  was  appointments  and  allusions,  all 
swimming  in  a  sea  of  other  allusions  still, 
tangled  in  a  complexity  of  questions  that 
gave  a  wondrous  image  of  their  life.  If 


IN  THE  CAGE  27 

Lady  Bradeen  was  Juno,  it  was  all  certainly 
Olympian.  If  the  girl,  missing  the  answers, 
her  ladyship's  own  outpourings,  sometimes 
wished  that  Cocker's  had  only  been  one  of 
the  bigger  offices  where  telegrams  arrived 
as  well  as  departed,  there  were  yet  ways  in 
which,  on  the  whole,  she  pressed  the  ro 
mance  closer  by  reason  of  the  very  quantity 
of  imagination  that  it  demanded.  The  days 
and  hours  of  this  new  friend,  as  she  came  to 
account  him,  were  at  all  events  unrolled, 
and  however  much  more  she  might  have 
known  she  would  still  have  wished  to  go 
beyond.  In  fact  she  did  go  beyond;  she 
went  quite  far  enough. 

But  she  could  none  the  less,  even  after  a 
month,  scarce  have  told  if  the  gentlemen 
who  came  in  with  him  recurred  or  changed ; 
and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  too 
were  always  posting  and  wiring,  smoking  in 
her  face  and  signing  or  not  signing.  The 
gentlemen  who  came  in  with  him  were  noth 
ing,  at  any  rate,  when  he  was  there.  They 
turned  up  alone  at  other  times — then  only 


28  IN  THE  CAGE 

perhaps  with  a  dim  richness  of  reference. 
He  himself,  absent  as  well  as  present,  was 
all.  He  was  very  tall,  very  fair,  and  had, 
in  spite  of  his  thick  preoccupations,  a  good- 
humour  that  was  exquisite,  particularly  as  it 
so  often  had  the  effect  of  keeping  him  on. 
He  could  have  reached  over  anybody,  and 
anybody — no  matter  who — would  have  let 
him ;  but  he  was  so  extraordinarily  kind  that 
he  quite  pathetically  waited,  never  waggling 
things  at  her  out  of  his  turn  or  saying '  Here ! ' 
with  horrid  sharpness.  He  waited  for  pot 
tering  old  ladies,  for  gaping  slaveys,  for  the 
perpetual  Buttonsesfrom  Thrupp's;  and  the 
thing  in  all  this  that  she  would  have  liked 
most  unspeakably  to  put  to  the  test  was  the 
possibility  of  her  having  for  him  a  personal 
identity  that  might  in  a  particular  way 
appeal.  There  were  moments  when  he 
actually  struck  her  as  on  her  side,  arranging 
to  help,  to  support,  to  spare  her. 

But  such  was  the  singular  spirit  of  our 
young  friend  that  she  could  remind  herself 
with  a  sort  of  rage  that  when  people  had 


IN  THE  CAGE  29 

awfully  good  manners — people  of  that  class — 
you  couldn't  tell.  These  manners  were  for 
everybody,  and  it  might  be  drearily  unavail 
ing  for  any  poor  particular  body  to  be  over 
worked  and  unusual.  What  he  did  take  for 
granted  was  all  sorts  of  facility ;  and  his  high 
pleasantness,  his  relighting  of  cigarettes 
while  he  waited,  his  unconscious  bestowal 
of  opportunities,  of  boons,  of  blessings,  were 
all  a  part  of  his  magnificent  security,  the 
instinct  that  told  him  there  was  nothing 
such  an  existence  as  his  could  ever  lose  by. 
He  was,  somehow,  at  once  very  bright  and 
very  grave,  very  young  and  immensely  com 
plete  ;  and  whatever  he  was  at  any  moment, 
it  was  always  as  much  as  all  the  rest  the 
mere  bloom  of  his  beatitude.  He  was  some 
times  Everard,  as  he  had  been  at  the  Hotel 
Brighton,  and  he  was  sometimes  Captain 
Everard.  He  was  sometimes  Philip  with 
his  surname  and  sometimes  Philip  without 
it.  In  some  directions  he  was  merely  Phil, 
in  others  he  was  merely  Captain.  There 
were  relations  in  which  he  was  none  of  these 


30  IN  THE  CAGE 

things,  but  a  quite  different  person — 'the 
Count.'  There  were  several  friends  for 
whom  he  was  William.  There  were  several 
for  whom,  in  allusion  perhaps  to  his  com 
plexion,  he  was  'the  Pink  'Un.'  Once, 
once  only  by  good  luck,  he  had,  coinciding 
comically,  quite  miraculously,  with  another 
person  also  near  to  her,  been  '  Mudge. '  Yes, 
whatever  he  was,  it  was  a  part  of  his  hap 
piness — whatever  he  was  and  probably  what 
ever  he  wasn't.  And  his  happiness  was  a 
part — it  became  so  little  by  little — of  some 
thing  that,  almost  from  the  first  of  her  being 
at  Cocker's,  had  been  deeply  with  the  girl. 


This  was  neither  more  nor  less  than  the 
queer  extension  of  her  experience,  the  double 
life  that,  in  the  cage,  she  grew  at  last  to 
lead.  As  the  weeks  went  on  there  she  lived 
more  and  more  into  the  world  of  whiffs  and 
glimpses,  and  found  her  divinations  work 
faster  and  stretch  further.  It  was  a  pro 
digious  view  as  the  pressure  heightened,  a 
panorama  fed  with  facts  and  figures,  flushed 
with  a  torrent  of  color  and  accompanied  with 
wondrous  world-music.  What  it  mainly 
came  to  at  this  period  was  a  picture  of  how 
London  could  amuse  itself;  and  that,  with 
the  running  commentary  of  a  witness  so 
exclusively  a  witness,  turned  for  the  most 
part  to  a  hardening  of  the  heart.  The  nose 
of  this  observer  was  brushed  by  the  bouquet, 
yet  she  could  never  really  pluck  even  a  daisy. 
What  could  still  remain  fresh  in  her  daily 

grind  was  the  immense  disparity,  the  differ- 
31 


32  IN  THE  CAGE 

ence  and  contrast,  from  class  to  class,  of 
every  instant  and  every  motion.  There 
were  times  when  all  the  wires  in  the  country 
seemed  to  start  from  the  little  hole-and- 
corner  where  she  plied  for  a  livelihood,  and 
where,  in  the  shuffle  of  feet,  the  flutter  of 
'forms,'  the  straying  of  stamps  and  the  ring 
of  change  over  the  counter,  the  people  she 
had  fallen  into  the  habit  of  remembering 
and  fitting  together  with  others,  and  of 
having  her  theories  and  interpretations  of, 
kept  up  before  her  their  long  procession  and 
rotation.  What  twisted  the  knife  in  her 
vitals  was  the  way  the  profligate  rich  scat 
tered  about  them,  in  extravagant  chatter 
over  their  extravagant  pleasures  and  sins, 
an  amount  of  money  that  would  have  held 
the  stricken  household  of  her  frightened 
childhood,  her  poor  pinched  mother  and  tor 
mented  father  and  lost  brother  and  starved 
sister,  together  for  a  lifetime.  During  her 
first  weeks  she  had  often  gasped  at  the 
sums  people  were  willing  to  pay  for  the  stuff 
they  transmitted — the  'much  loves,'  the 


IN  THE  CAGE  33 

'awful'  regrets,  the  compliments  and  won 
derments  and  vain,  vague  gestures  that  cost 
the  price  of  a  new  pair  of  boots.  She  had 
had  a  way  then  of  glancing  at  the  people's 
faces,  but  she  had  early  learned  that  if  you 
became  a  telegraphist  you  soon  ceased  to  be 
astonished.  Her  eye  for  types  amounted 
nevertheless  to  genius,  and  there  were  those 
she  liked  and  those,  she  hated,  her  feeling 
for  the  latter  of  which  grew  to  a  positive 
possession,  an  instinct  of  observation  arid 
detection.  There  were  the  brazen  women,  as 
she  called  them,  of  the  higher  and  the  lower 
fashion,  whose  squanderings  and  graspings, 
whose  struggles  and  secrets  and  love-affairs 
and  lies  she  tracked  and  stored  up  against 
them,  till  she  had  at  moments,  in  private,  a 
triumphant,  vicious  feeling  of  mastery  and 
power,  a  sense  of  having  their  silly,  guilty 
secrets  in  her  pocket,  her  small  retentive 
brain,  and  thereby  knowing  so  much  more 
about  them  than  they  suspected  or  would 
care  to  think.  There  were  those  she  would 
have  liked  to  betray,  to  trip  up,  to  bring 


34  IN  THE  CAGE 

down  with  words  altered  and  fatal ;  and  all 
through  a  personal  hostility  provoked  by  the 
lightest  signs,  by  their  accidents  of  tone  and 
manner,  by  the  particular  kind  of  relation 
she  always  happened  instantly  to  feel. 

There  were  impulses  of  various  kinds, 
alternately  soft  and  severe,  to  which  she  was 
constitutionally  accessible  and  which  were 
determined  by  the  smallest  accidents.  She 
was  rigid,  in  general,  on  the  article  of  mak 
ing  the  public  itself  affix  its  stamps,  and 
found  a  special  enjoyment  in  dealing,  to  that 
end,  with  some  of  the  ladies  who  were  too 
grand  to  touch  them.  She  had  thus  a  play 
of  refinement  and  subtlety  greater,  she  flat 
tered  herself,  than  any  of  which  she  could 
be  made  the  subject;  and  though  most  peo 
ple  were  too  stupid  to  be  conscious  of  this, 
it  brought  her  endless  little  consolations  and 
revenges.  She  recognised  quite  as  much 
those  of  her  sex  whom  she  would  have  liked 
to  help,  to  warn,  to  rescue,  to  see  more  of; 
and  that  alternative  as  well  operated  exactly 
through  the  hazard  of  personal  sympathy, 


IN  THE  CAGE  35 

her  vision  for  silver  threads  and  moonbeams 
and  her  gift  for  keeping  the  clues  and  find 
ing  her  way  in  the  tangle.  The  moonbeams 
and  silver  threads  presented  at  moments  all 
the  vision  of  what  poor  she  might  have  made 
of  happiness.  Blurred  and  blank  as  the 
whole  thing  often  inevitably,  or  mercifully, 
became,  she  could  still,  through  crevices  and 
crannies,  be  stupified,  especially  by  what, 
in  spite  of  all  seasoning,  touched  the  sorest 
place  in  her  consciousness,  the  revelation  of 
the  golden  shower  flying  about  without  a 
gleam  of  gold  for  herself.  It  remained  pro 
digious  to  the  end,  the  money  her  fine  friends 
were  able  to  spend  to  get  still  more,  or  even 
to  complain  to  fine  friends  of  their  own  that 
they  were  in  want.  The  pleasures  they  pro 
posed  were  equalled  only  by  those  they 
declined,  and  they  made  their  appointments 
often  so  expensively  that  she  was  left  won 
dering  at  the  nature  of  the  delights  to  which 
the  mere  approaches  were  so  paved  with 
shillings.  She  quivered  on  occasion  into  the 
perception  of  this  and  that  one  whom  she 


36  IN  THE  CAGE 

would,  at  all  events,  have  just  simply  liked 
to  be.  Her  conceit,  her  baffled  vanity  were 
possibly  monstrous ;  she  certainly  often  threw 
herself  into  a  defiant  conviction  that  she 
would  have  done  the  whole  thing  much 
better.  But  her  greatest  comfort,  on  the 
whole,  was  her  comparative  vision  of  the 
men ;  by  whom  I  mean  the  unmistakable  gen 
tlemen,  for  she  had  no  interest  in  the  spurious 
or  the  shabby,  and  no  mercy  at  all  for  the 
poor.  She  could  have  found  a  sixpence,  out 
side,  for  an  appearance  of  want;  but  her 
fancy,  in  some  directions  so  alert,  had  never 
a  throb  of  response  for  any  sign  of  the  sordid. 
The  men  she  did  follow,  moreover,  she  fol 
lowed  mainly  in  one  relation,  the  relation  as 
to  which  the  cage  convinced  her,  she  be- 
.lieved,  more  than  anything  else  could  have 
done,  that  it  was  quite  the  most  diffused. 

She  found  her  ladies,  in  short,  almost 
always  in  communication  with  her  gentle 
men,  and  her  gentlemen  with  her  ladies,  and 
she  read  into  the  immensity  of  their  inter 
course  stories  and  meanings  without  end. 


IN  THE  CAGE  37 

Incontestibly  she  grew  to  think  that  the  men 
cut  the  best  figure ;  and  in  this  particular, 
as  in  many  others,  she  arrived  at  a  philos 
ophy  of  her  own,  all  made  up  of  her  private 
notations  and  cynicisms.  It  was  a  striking 
part  of  the  business,  for  example,  that  it  was 
much  more  the  women,  on  the  whole,  who 
were  after  the  men  than  the  men  who  were 
after  the  women ;  it  was  literally  visible  that 
the  general  attitude  of  the  one  sex  was  that 
of  the  object  pursued  and  defensive,  apolo 
getic  and  attenuating,  while  the  light  of  her 
own  nature  helped  her  more  or  less  to  con 
clude  as  to  the  attitude  of  the  other.  Per 
haps  she  herself  a  little  even  fell  into  the 
custom  of  pursuit  in  occasionally  deviating 
only  for  gentlemen  from  her  high  rigour 
about  the  stamps.  She  had  early  in  the  day 
made  up  her  mind,  in  fine,  that  they  had  the 
best  manners;  and  if  there  were  none  of 
them  she  noticed  when  Captain  Everard  was 
there,  there  were  plenty  she  could  place  and 
trace  and  name  at  other  times,  plenty  who, 
with  their  way  of  being  'nice'  to  her,  and  of 


38  IN  THE  CAGE 

handling,  as  if  their  pockets  were  private 
tills,  loose,  mixed  masses  of  silver  and  gold, 
were  such  pleasant  appearances  that  she 
could  envy  them  without  dislike.  They 
never  had  to  give  change — they  only  had  to 
get  it.  They  ranged  through  every  sugges 
tion,  every  shade  of  fortune,  which  evidently 
included  indeed  lots  of  bad  luck  as  well  as  of 
good,  declining  even  toward  Mr.  Mudge  and 
his  bland,  firm  thrift,  and  ascending,  in  wild 
signals  and  rocket-flights,  almost  to  within 
hail  of  her  highest  standard.  So,  from  month 
to  month,  she  went  on  with  them  all,  through 
a  thousand  ups  and  downs  and  a  thousand 
pangs  and  indifferences.  What  virtually  hap 
pened  was  that  in  the  shuffling  herd  that 
passed  before  her  by  far  the  greater  part  only 
passed — a  proportion  but  just  appreciable 
stayed.  Most  of  the  elements  swam  straight 
away,  lost  themselves  in  the  bottomless  com 
mon,  and  by  so  doing  really  kept  the  page 
clear.  On  the  clearness,  therefore,  what  she 
did  retain  stood  sharply  out ;  she  nipped  and 
caught  it,  turned  it  over  and  interwove  it. 


VI 

She  met  Mrs.  Jordan  whenever  she  could, 
and  learned  from  her  more  and  more  how 
the  great  people,  under  her  gentle  shake, 
and  after  going  through  everything  with  the 
mere  shops,  were  waking  up  to  the  gain  of 
putting  into  the  hands  of  a  person  of  real 
refinement  the  question  that  the  shop-people 
spoke  of  so  vulgarly  as  that  of  the  floral 
decorations.  The  regular  dealers  in  these 
decorations  were  all  very  well;  but  there 
was  a  peculiar  magic  in  the  play  of  taste  of 
a  lady  who  had  only  to  remember,  through 
whatever  intervening  dusk,  all  her  own  little 
tables,  little  bowls  and  little  jars  and  little 
other  arrangements,  and  the  wonderful  thing 
she  had  made  of  the  garden  of  the  vicarage. 
This  small  domain,  which  her  young  friend 
had  never  seen,  bloomed  in  Mrs.  Jordan's 
discourse  like  a  new  Eden,  and  she  con 
verted  the  past  into  a  bank  of  violets  by  the 

39 


40  IN  THE  CAGE 

tone  in  which  she  said,  'Of  course  you  always 
knew  my  one  passion!'  She  obviously  met 
now,  at  any  rate,  a  big  contemporary  need, 
measured  what  it  was  rapidly  becoming  for 
people  to  feel  they  could  trust  her  without  a 
tremor.  It  brought  them  a  peace  that — 
during  the  quarter  of  an  hour  before  dinner 
in  especial — was  worth  more  to  them  than 
mere  payment  could  express.  Mere  pay 
ment,  none  the  less,  was  tolerably  prompt ; 
she  engaged  by  the  month,  taking  over  the 
whole  thing;  and  there  was  an  evening  on 
which,  in  respect  to  our  heroine,  she  at  last 
returned  to  the  charge.  'It's  growing  and 
growing,  and  I  see  that  I  must  really  divide 
the  work.  One  wants  an  associate — of  one's 
own  kind,  don't  you  know?  You  know  the 
look  they  want  it  all  to  have? — of  having 
come,  not  from  a  florist,  but  from  one  of 
themselves.  Well,  I'm  sure  you  could  give 
it — because  you  are  one.  Then  we  should 
win.  Therefore  just  come  in  with  me. ' 

'And  leave  the  P.  O.?' 

'Let   the    P.   O.   simply  bring    you    your 


IN  THE  CAGE  41 

letters.  It  would  bring  you  lots,  you'd  see; 
orders,  after  a  bit,  by  the  dozen.'  It  was 
on  this,  in  due  course,  that  the  great  advan 
tage  again  came  up :  'One  seems  to  live  again 
with  one's  own  people.'  It  had  taken  some 
little  time  (after  their  having  parted  com 
pany  in  the  tempest  of  their  troubles  and 
then,  in  the  glimmering  dawn,  finally  sighted 
each  other  again)  for  each  to  admit  that  the 
other  was,  in  her  private  circle,  her  only 
equal ;  but  the  admission  came,  when  it  did 
come,  with  an  honest  groan,  and  since 
equality  was  named  each  found  much  per 
sonal  profit  in  exaggerating  the  other's  origi 
nal  grandeur.  Mrs.  Jordan  was  ten  years  the 
older,  but  her  young  friend  was  struck  with 
the  smaller  difference  this  now  made ;  it  had 
counted  otherwise  at  the  time  when,  much 
more  as  a  friend  of  her  mother's,  the  be 
reaved  lady,  without  a  penny  of  provision, 
and  with  stopgaps,  like  their  own,  all  gone, 
had,  across  the  sordid  landing  on  which  the 
opposite  doors  of  the  pair  of  scared  miseries 
opened  and  to  which  they  were  bewilderedly 


42  IN  THE  CAGE 

bolted,  borrowed  coals  and  umbrellas  that 
were  repaid  in  potatoes  and  postage-stamps. 
It  had  been  a  questionable  help,  at  that  time, 
to  ladies  submerged,  floundering,  panting, 
swimming  for  their  lives,  that  they  were 
ladies ;  but  such  an  advantage  could  come  up 
again  in  proportion  as  others  vanished,  and 
it  had  grown  very  great  by  the  time  it  was 
the  only  ghost  of  one  they  possessed.  They 
had  literally  watched  it  take  to  itself  a  por 
tion  of  the  substance  of  each  that  had  de 
parted  ;  and  it  became  prodigious  now,  when 
they  could  talk  of  it  together,  when  they 
could  look  back  at  it  across  a  desert  of 
accepted  derogation,  and  when,  above  all, 
they  could  draw  from  each  other  a  credulity 
about  it  that  they  could  draw  from  no  one 
else.  Nothing  was  really  so  marked  as  that 
they  felt  the  need  to  cultivate  this  legend 
much  more  after  having  found  their  feet  and 
stayed  their  stomachs  in  the  ultimate  obscure 
than  they  had  done  in  the  upper  air  of  mere 
frequent  shocks.  The  thing  they  could  now 
oftenest  say  to  each  other  was  that  they 


IN  THE  CAGE  43 

knew  what  they  meant,  and  the  sentiment 
with  which,  all  round,  they  knew  it  was 
known  had  been  a  kind  of  promise  to  stick 
well  together  again. 

Mrs.  Jordan  was  at  present  fairly  dazzling 
on  the  subject  of  the  way  that,  in  the  practice 
of  her  beautiful  art,  she  more  than  peeped 
in — she  penetrated.  There  was  not  a  house 
of  the  great  kind — and  it  was,  of  course, 
only  a  question  of  those  real  homes  of  lux 
ury — in  which  she  was  not,  at  the  rate  such 
people  now  had  things,  all  over  the  place. 
The  girl  felt  before  the  picture  the  cold 
breath  of  disinheritance  as  much  as  she  had 
ever  felt  it  in  the  cage;  she  knew,  more 
over,  how  much  she  betrayed  this,  for  the 
experience  of  poverty  had  begun,  in  her  life, 
too  early,  and  her  ignorance  of  the  require 
ments  of  homes  of  luxury  had  grown,  with 
other  active  knowledge,  a  depth  of  simpli 
fication.  She  had  accordingly  at  first  often 
found  that  in  these  colloquies  she  could  only 
pretend  she  understood.  Educated  as  she 
had  rapidly  been  by  her  chances  at  Cocker's 


44  IN  THE  CAGE 

there  were  still  strange  gaps  in  her  learning — 
she  could  never,  like  Mrs.  Jordan,  have 
found  her  way  about  one  of  the 'homes.' 
Little  by  little,  however,  she  had  caught  on, 
above  all  in  the  light  of  what  Mrs.  Jordan's 
redemption  had  materially  made  of  that 
lady,  giving  her,  though  the  years  and  the 
struggles  had  naturally  not  straightened  a 
feature,  an  almost  super-eminent  air.  There 
were  women  in  and  out  of  Cocker's  who 
were  quite  nice  and  who  yet  didn't  look  well ; 
whereas  Mrs.  Jordan  looked  well  and  yet, 
with  her  extraordinarily  protrusive  teeth, 
was  by  no  means  quite  nice.  It  would  seem, 
mystifyingly,  that  it  might  really  come  from 
all  the  greatness  she  could  live  with.  It  was 
fine  to  hear  her  talk  so  often  of  dinners  of 
twenty  and  of  her  doing,  as  she  said,  exactly 
as  she  liked  with  them.  She  spoke  as  if,  for 
that  matter,  she  invited  the  company. 
'They  simply  give  me  the  table — all  the  rest, 
all  the  other  effects,  come  afterwards. ' 


VII 

'Then  you  do  see  them?'  the  girl  again 
asked. 

Mrs.  Jordan  hesitated,  and  indeed  the 
point  had  been  ambiguous  before.  'Do  you 
mean  the  guests?' 

Her  young  friend,  cautious  about  an 
undue  exposure  of  innocence,  was  not  quite 
sure.  'Well — the  people  who  live  there. ' 

'Lady  Ventnor?  Mrs.  Bubb?  Lord  Rye? 
Dear,  yes.  Why,  they  like  one.' 

'But  does  one  personally  know  them?'  our 
young  lady  went  on,  since  that  was  the  way 
to  speak.  '  I  mean  socially,  don't  you  know  ? — 
as  you  know  me. ' 

'They're  not  so  nice  as  you!'  Mrs.  Jordan 
charmingly  cried.  'But  I  shall  see  more  and 
more  of  them. ' 

Ah,  this  was  the  old  story.  'But  how 
soon?' 

'Why,  almost  any  day.     Of  course,'  Mrs. 

45 


46  IN  THE  CAGE 

Jordan  honestly  added,  'they're  nearly 
always  out. ' 

'Then  why  do  they  want  flowers  all  over?' 

'Oh,  that  doesn't  make  any  difference.' 
Mrs.  Jordan  was  not  philosophic;  she  was 
only  evidently  determined  it  shouldn't  make 
any.  'They're  awfully  interested  in  my 
ideas,  and  it's  inevitable  they  should  meet 
me  over  them. ' 

Her    interlocutress    was   sturdy   enough. 

'What  do  you  call  your  ideas?' 

Mrs.  Jordan's  reply  was  fine.  'If  you 
were  to  see  me  some  day  with  a  thousand 
tulips,  you'd  soon  discover.' 

'A  thousand?' — the  girl  gasped  at  such  a 
revelation  of  the  scale  of  it;  she  felt,  for 
the  instant,  fairly  planted  out.  'Well,  but 
if  in  fact  they  never  do  meet  you?'  she  none 
the  less  pessimistically  insisted. 

'Never?  They  often  do — and  evidently 
quite  on  purpose.  We  have  grand  long 
talks. ' 

There  was  something  in  our  young  lady 
that  could  still  stay  her  from  asking  for  a 


IN  THE  CAGE  47 

personal  description  of  these  apparitions; 
that  showed  too  starved  a  state.  But  while 
she  considered  she  took  in  afresh  the  whole 
of  the  clergyman.'s  widow.  Mrs.^  Jordan 
couldn't  help  her  teeth,  and  her  sleeves 
were  a  distinct  rise  in  the  world.  A  thou 
sand  tulips  at  a  shilling  clearly  took  one 
further  than  a  thousand  words  at  a  penny ; 
and  the  betrothed  of  Mr.  Mudge,  in  whom 
the  sense  of  the  race  for  life  was  always 
acute,  found  herself  wondering,  with  a 
twinge  of  her  easy  jealousy,  if  it  mightn't 
after  all  then,  for  her  also,  be  better — better 
than  where  she  was — to  follow  some  such 
scent.  Where  she  was  was  where  Mr.  Buck- 
ton's  elbow  could  freely  enter  her  right  side 
and  the  counter-clerk's  breathing — he  had 
something  the  matter  with  his  nose — pervade 
her  left  ear.  It  was  something  to  fill  an  office 
under  government,  and  she  knew  but  too 
well  there  were  places  commoner  still  than 
Cocker's;  but  it  never  required  much  of  a 
chance  to  bring  back  to  her  the  picture  of 
servitude  and  promiscuity  that  she  must 


48  IN  THE  CAGE 

present  to  the  eye  of  comparative  freedom. 
She  was  so  boxed  up  with  her  young  men, 
and  anything  like  a  margin  so  absent,  that  it 
needed  more  art  than  she  should  ever  possess 
to  pretend  in  the  least  to  compass,  with  any 
one  in  the  nature  of  an  acquaintance — say 
with  Mrs.  Jordan  herself,  flying  in,  as  it 
might  happen,  to  wire  sympathetically  to 
Mrs.  Bubb — an  approach  to  a  relation  of 
elegant  privacy.  She  remembered  the  day 
when  Mrs.  Jordan  had,  in  fact,  by  the  great 
est  chance,  come  in  with  fifty-three  words 
for  Lord  Rye  and  a  five-pound  note  to 
change.  This  had  been  the  dramatic  man 
ner  of  their  reunion — their  mutual  recogni 
tion  was  so  great  an  event.  The  girl  could 
at  first  only  see  her  from  the  waist  up, 
besides  making  but  little  of  her  long  tele 
gram  to  his  lordship.  It  was  a  strange 
whirligig  that  had  converted  the  clergyman's 
widow  into  such  a  specimen  of  the  class 
that  went  beyond  the  sixpence. 

Nothing  of  the  occasion,  all  the  more,  had 
ever  become  dim ;  least  of  all  the  way  that, 


IN  THE  CAGE  49 

as  her  recovered  friend  looked  up  from 
counting,  Mrs.  Jordan  had  just  blown,  in 
explanation,  through  her  teeth  and  through 
the  bars  of  the  cage:  'I  do  flowers,  you 
know.'  Our  young  woman  had  always, 
with  her  little  finger  crooked  out,  a  pretty 
movement  for  counting;  and  she  had  not 
forgotten  the  small  secret  advantage,  a  sharp 
ness  of  triumph  it  might  even  have  been 
called,  that  fell  upon  her  at  this  moment  and 
avenged  her  for  the  incoherency  of  the 
message,  an  unintelligible  enumeration  of 
numbers,  colors,  days,  hours.  The  corres 
pondence  of  people  she  didn't  know  was  one 
thing ;  but  the  correspondence  of  people  she 
did  had  an  aspect  of  its  own  for  her,  even 
when  she  couldn't  understand  it.  The 
speech  in  which  Mrs.  Jordan  had  defined  a 
position  and  announced  a  profession  was 
like  a  tinkle  of  bluebells;  but,  for  herself, 
her  one  idea  about  flowers  was  that  people 
had  them  at  funerals,  and  her  present  sole 
gleam  of  light  was  that  lords  probably  had 
them  most.  When  she  watched,  a  minute 


5o  IN  THE  CAGE 

later,  through  the  cage,  the  swing  of  her 
visitor's  departing  petticoats,  she  saw  the 
sight  from  the  waist  down ;  and  when  the 
counter-clerk,  after  a  mere  male  glance, 
remarked,  with  an  intention  unmistakably 
low,  'Handsome  woman!'  she  had  for  him 
the  finest  of  her  chills:  'She's  the  widow 
of  a  bishop.'  She  alwa}>-s  felt,  with  the 
counter-clerk,  that  it  was  impossible  suf- 
ficently  to  put  it  on;  for  what  she  wished 
to  express  to  him  was  the  maximum  of  her 
contempt,  and  that  element  in  her  nature 
was  confusedly  stored.  'A  bishop'  was 
putting  it  on,  but  the  counter-clerk's  ap 
proaches  were  vile.  The  night,  after  this, 
when,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  Mrs.  Jordan 
mentioned  the  grand  long  talks,  the  girl  at 
last  brought  out:  'Should  I  see  them? — I 
mean  if  I  were  to  give  up  everything  for  you. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan  at  this  became  most  arch. 
'I'd  send  you  to  all  the  bachelors!' 

Our  young  lady  could  be  reminded  by  such 
a  remark  that  she  usually  struck  her  friend 
as  pretty.  'Do//z<?>/have  their  flowers?' 


IN  THE  CAGE  51 

'Oceans.  And  they're  the  most  particu 
lar.'  Oh,  it  was  a  wonderful  world.  'You 
should  see  Lord  Rye's.' 

'His  flowers?' 

'Yes,  and  his  letters.  He  writes  me  pages 
on  pages — with  the  most  adorable  little 
drawings  and  plans.  You  should  see  his 
diagrams!' 


r1 


VIII 

The  girl  had  in  course  of  time  every 
opportunity  to  inspect  these  documents,  and 
they  a  little  disappointed  her;  but  in  the 
meanwhile  there  had  been  more  talk,  and  it 
had  led  to  her  saying,  as  if  her  friend's 
guarantee  of  a  life  of  elegance  were  not 
quite  definite:  "Well,  I  see  every  one  at  my 
place.' 

'Every  one?' 

'Lots  of  swells.  They  flock.  They  live, 
you  know,  all  round,  and  the  place  is  filled 
with  all  the  smart  people,  all  the  fast  people, 
those  whose  names  are  in  the  papers — mam 
ma  has  still  the  Morning  Post — and  who 
come  up  for  the  season. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan  took  this  in  with  complete 
intelligence.  'Yes,  and  I  dare  say  it's  some 
of  your  people  that  /  do. ' 

Her  companion  assented,  but  discrim 
inated.  'I  doubt  if  you  "do"  them  as  much 

53 


54  IN  THE  CAGE 

as  I !  Their  affairs,  their  appointments  and 
arrangements,  their  little  games  and  secrets 
and  vices — those  things  all  pass  before  me. ' 

This  was  a  picture  that  could,  impose  on 
a  clergyman's  widow  a  certain  strain;  it  was 
in  intention,  moreover,  something  of  a  retort 
to  the  thousand  tulips.  'Their  vices?  Have 
they  got  vices?' 

Our  young  critic  even  more  remarkably 
stared;  then  with  a  touch  of  contempt  in 
her  amusement:  'Haven't  you  found  that 
out?'  The  homes  of  luxury,  then,  hadn't  so 
much  to  give.  '/  find  out  everything,'  she 
continued. 

Mrs.  Jordan,  at  bottom  a  very  meek 
person,  was  visibly  struck.  'I  see.  You 
do  "have"  them.' 

'Oh,  I  don't  care!  Much  good  does  it  do  me!' 

Mrs.  Jordan,  after  an  instant,  recovered 
her  superiority.  'No — it  doesn't  lead  to 
much. '  Her  own  initiations  so  clearly  did. 
Still — after  all;  and  she  was  not  jealous: 
'There  must  be  a  charm.' 

'In  seeing  them?'     At  this  the  girl  sud- 


IN  THE  CAGE  55 

denly  let  herself  go.  'I  hate  them;  there's 
that  charm!' 

Mrs.  Jordan  gaped  again.  'The  real 
"smarts"?' 

'Is  that  what  you  call  Mrs.  Bubb?  Yes — 
it  comes  to  me;  I've  had  Mrs.  Bubb.  I 
don't  think  she  has  been  in  herself,  but 
there  are  things  her  maid  has  brought. 
Well,  my  dear!' — and  the  young  person  from 
Cocker's,  recalling  these  things  and  summing 
them  up,  seemed  suddenly  to  have  much  to 
say.  But  she  didn't  say  it;  she  checked  it; 
she  only  brought  out:  'Her  maid,  who's 
horrid — she  must  have  her ! '  Then  she  went 
on  with  indifference:  'They're  too  real! 
They're  selfish  brutes. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan,  turning  it  over,  adopted  at 
last  the  plan  of  treating  it  with  a  smile.  She 
wished  to  be  liberal.  'Well,  of  course,  they 
do  lay  it  out. ' 

'They  bore  me  to  death,'  her  companion 
pursued  with  slightly  more  temperance. 

But  this  was  going  too  far.  4Ah,  that's 
because  you've  no  sympathy!' 


56  IN  THE  CAGE 

The  girl  gave  an  ironic  laugh,  only  retort 
ing  that  she  wouldn't  have  any  either  if  she 
had  to  count  all  day  all  the  words  in  the 
dictionary;  a  contention  Mrs.  Jordan  quite 
granted,  the  more  that  she  shuddered  at  the 
notion  of  ever  failing  of  the  very  gift  to 
which  she  owed  the  vogue — the  rage  she 
might  call  it — that  had  caught  her  up. 
Without  sympathy — or  without  imagination, 
for  it  came  back  again  to  that — how  should 
she  get,  for  big  dinners,  down  the  middle 
and  toward  the  far  corners  at  all?  It  wasn't 
the  combinations,  which  were  easily  man 
aged  :  the  strain  was  over  the  ineffable  sim 
plicities,  those  that  the  bachelors  above  all, 
and  Lord  Rye  perhaps  most  of  any,  threw 
off — just  blew  off,  like  cigarette-puffs — such 
sketches  of.  The  betrothed  of  Mr.  Mudge 
at  all  events  accepted  the  explanation,  which 
had  the  effect,  as  almost  any  turn  of  their 
talk  was  now  apt  to  have,  of  bringing  her 
round  to  the  terrific  question  of  that  gentle 
man.  She  was  tormented  with  the  desire  to 
get  out  of  Mrs.  Jordan,  on  this  subject,  what 


IN  THE  CAGE  57 

she  was  sure  was  at  the  back  of  Mrs.  Jor 
dan's  head;  and  to  get  it  out  of  her,  queerly 
enough,  if  only  to  vent  a  certain  irritation 
at  it.  She  knew  that  what  her  friend  would 
already  have  risked  if  she  had  not  been 
timid  and  tortuous  was :  '  Give  him  up — yes, 
give  him  up :  you'll  see  that  with  your  sure 
chances  you'll  be  able  to  do  much  better.' 
Our  young  woman  had  a  sense  that  if  that 
view  could  only  be  put  before  her  with  a 
particular  sniff  for  poor  Mr.  Mudge  she 
should  hate  it  as  much  as  she  morally  ought. 
She  was  conscious  of  not,  as  yet,  hating  it 
quite  so  much  as  that.  But  she  saw  that 
Mrs.  Jordan  was  conscious  of  something 
too,  and  that  there  was  a  sort  of  assurance 
she  was  waiting  little  by  little  to  gather. 
The  day  came  when  the  girl  caught  a 
glimpse  of  what  was  still  wanting  to  make 
her  friend  feel  strong;  which  was  nothing 
less  than  the  prospect  of  being  able  to 
announce  the  climax  of  sundry  private 
dreams.  The  associate  of  the  aristocracy 
had  personal  calculations — she  pored  over 


58  IN  THE  CAGE 

them  in  her  lonely  lodgings.  If  she  did  the 
flowers  for  the  bachelors,  in  short,  didn't  she 
expect  that  to  have  consequences  very  differ 
ent  from  the  outlook,  at  Cocker's,  that  she 
had  described  as  leading  to  nothing?  There 
seemed  in  very  truth  something  auspicious 
in  the  mixture  of  bachelors  and  flowers, 
though,  when  looked  hard  in  the  eye,  Mrs. 
Jordan  was  not  quite  prepared  to  say  she 
had  expected  a  positive  proposal  from  Lord 
Rye  to  pop  out  of  it.  Our  young  woman 
arrived  at  last,  none  the  less,  at  a  definite 
vision  of  what  was  in  her  mind.  This  was 
a  vivid  foreknowledge  that  the  betrothed  of 
Mr.  Mudge  would,  unless  conciliated  in 
advance  by  a  successful  rescue,  almost  hate 
her  on  the  day  she  should  break  a  particular 
piece  of  news.  How  could  that  unfortunate 
otherwise  endure  to  hear  of  what,  under  the 
protection  of  Lady  Ventnor,  was  after  all  so 
possible? 


IX 

Meanwhile,  since  irritation  sometimes 
relieved  her,  the  betrothed  of  Mr.  Mudge 
drew  straight  from  that  admirer  an  amount 
of  it  that  was  proportioned  to  her  fidelity. 
She  always  walked  with  him  on  Sundays, 
usually  in  the  Regent's  Park,  and  quite 
often,  once  or  twice  a  month,  he  took  her, 
in  the  Strand  or  thereabouts,  to  see  a  piece 
that  was  having  a  run.  The  productions  he 
always  preferred  were  the  really  good  ones — 
Shakespeare,  Thompson  or  some  funny 
American  thing;  which,  as  it  also  happened 
that  she  hated  vulgar  plays,  gave  him  ground 
for  what  was  almost  the  fondest  of  his 
approaches,  the  theory  that  their  tastes 
were,  blissfully,  just  the  same.  He  was  for 
ever  reminding  her  of  that,  rejoicing  over 
it,  and  being  affectionate  and  wise  about  it. 

There  were  times  when  she  wondered  how 
in  the  world  she  could  bear  him,  how  she 

59 


60  IN  THE  CAGE 

could  bear  any  man  so  smugly  unconscious 
of  the  immensity  of  her  difference.  It  was 
just  for  this  difference  that,  if  she  was  to  be 
liked  at  all,  she  wanted  to  be  liked,  and  if 
that  was  not  the  source  of  Mr.  Mudge's 
admiration,  she  asked  herself,  what  on  earth 
could  be?  She  was  not  different  only  at  one 
point,  she  was  different  all  round;  unless 
perhaps  indeed  in  being  practically  human, 
which  her  mind  just  barely  recognised  that 
he  also  was.  She  would  have  made  tremen 
dous  concessions  in  other  quarters:  there 
was  no  limit,  for  instance,  to  those  she  would 
have  made  to  Captain  Everard ;  but  what  I 
have  named  was  the  most  she  was  prepared 
to  do  for  Mr.  Mudge.  It  was  because  he 
was  different  that,  in  the  oddest  way,  she 
liked  as  well  as  deplored  him;  which  was 
after  all  a  proof  that  the  disparity,  should 
they  frankly  recognise  it,  wouldn't  neces 
sarily  be  fatal.  She  felt  that,  oleaginous — 
too  oleaginous — as  he  was,  he  was  somehow 
comparatively  primitive:  she  had  once, 
during  the  portion  of  his  time  at  Cocker's 


IN  THE  CAGE  61 

that  had  overlapped  her  own,  seen  him 
collar *a  drunken  soldier,  a  big,  violent  man, 
who,  having  come  in  with  a  mate  to  get  a 
postal-order  cashed,  had  made  a  grab  at  the 
money  before  his  friend  could  reach  it  and 
had  so  produced,  among  the  hams  and 
cheeses  and  the  lodgers  from  Thrupp's, 
reprisals  instantly  ensuing,  a  scene  of  scan 
dal  and  consternation.  Mr.  Buckton  and  the 
counter-clerk  had  crouched  within  the  cage, 
but  Mr.  Mudge  had,  with  a  very  quiet  but 
very  quick  slep  round  the  counter,  trium 
phantly  interposed  in  the  scrimmage,  parted 
the  combatants  and  shaken  the  delinquent 
in  his  skin.  She  had  been  proud  of  him  at 
that  moment  and  had  felt  that  if  their  affair 
had  not  already  been  settled  the  neatness 
of  his  execution  would  have  left  her  with 
out  resistance. 

Their  affair  had  been  settled  by  other 
things:  by  the  evident  sincerity  of  his  passion 
and  by  the  sense  that  his  high  white  apron 
resembled  a  front  of  many  floors.  It  had 
gone  a  great  way  with  her  that  he  would 


62  IN  THE  CAGE 

build  up  a  business  to  his  chin,  which 
he  carried  quite  in  the  air.  This  could 
only  be  a  question  of  time ;  he  would  have 
all  Piccadilly  in  the  pen  behind  his  ear. 
That  was  a  merit  in  itself  for  a  girl  who  had 
known  what  she  had  known.  There  were 
hours  at  which  she  even  found  him  good- 
looking,  though,  frankly,  there  could  be  no 
crown  for  her  effort  to  imagine,  on  the  part 
of  the  tailor  or  the  barber,  some  such  treat 
ment  of  his  appearance  as  would  make  him 
resemble  even  remotely  a  gentleman.  His 
very  beauty  was  the  beauty  of  a  grocer,  and 
the  finest  future  would  offer  it  none  too  much 
room  to  expand.  She  had  engaged  herself, 
in  short,  to  the  perfection  of  a  type,  and 
perfection  of  anything  was  much  for  a  per 
son  who,  out  of  early  troubles,  had  just 
escaped  with  her  life.  But  it  contributed 
hugely  at  present  to  carry  on  the  two  paral 
lel  lines  of  her  contacts  in  the  cage  and  her 
contacts  out  of  it.  After  keeping  quiet  for 
some  time  about  this  opposition  she  sud 
denly — one  Sunday  afternoon  on  a  penny 


IN  THE  CAGE  63 

chair  in  the  Regent's  Park — broke,  for  him, 
capriciously,  bewilderingly,  into  an  intima 
tion  of  what  it  came  to.  He  naturally  pressed 
more  and  more  on  the  subject  of  her  again 
placing  herself  where  he  could  see  her 
hourly,  and  for  her  to  recognise  that  since 
she  had  as  yet  given  him  no  sane  reason  for 
delay  she  had  no  need  to  hear  him  say  that 
he  couldn't  make  out  what  she  was  up  to.  As 
if,  with  her  absurd  bad  reasons,  she  knew  it 
herself!  Sometimes  she  thought  it  would 
be  amusing  to  let  him  have  them  full  in  the 
face,  for  she  felt  she  should  die  of  him  unless 
she  once  in  a  while  stupefied  him ;  and  some 
times  she  thought  it  would  be  disgusting  and 
perhaps  even  fatal.  She  liked  him,  how 
ever,  to  think  her  silly,  for  that  gave  her  the 
margin  which,  at  the  best,  she  would  always 
require;  and  the  only  difficulty  about  this 
was  that  he  hadn't  enough  imagination  to 
oblige  her.  It  produced,  none  the  less, 
something  of  the  desired  effect — to  leave  him 
simply  wondering  why,  over  the  matter  of 
their  reunion,  she  didn't  yield  to  his  argu- 


64  IN  THE  CAGE 

ments.  Then  at  last,  simply  as  if  by  acci 
dent  and  out  of  mere  boredom  on  a  day  that 
was  rather  flat,  she  preposterously  produced 
her  own.  'Well,  wait  a  bit.  Where  I  am  I 
still  see  things.'  And  she  talked  to  him 
even  worse,  if  possible,  than  she  had  talked 
to  Mrs.  Jordan. 

Little  by  little,  to  her  own  stupefaction, 
she  caught  that  he  was  trying  to  take  it  as 
she  meant  it  and  that  he  was  neither  aston 
ished  nor  angry.  Oh,  the  British  trades 
man — this  gave  her  an  idea  of  his  resources ! 
Mr.  Mudge  would  be  angry  only  with  a 
person  who,  like  the  drunken  soldier  in  the 
shop,  should  have  an  unfavourable  effect 
upon  business.  He  seemed  positively  to 
enter,  for  the  time  and  without  the  faintest 
flash  of  irony  or  ripple  of  laughter,  into  the 
whimsical  grounds  of  her  enjoyment  of 
Cocker's  custom,  and  instantly  to  be  casting 
up  whatever  it  might,  as  Mrs.  Jordan  had 
said,  lead  to.  What  he  had  in  mind  was 
not,  of  course,  what  Mrs.  Jordan  had  had :  it 
was  obviously  not  a  source  of  speculation 


IN  THE  CAGE  65 

with  him  that  his  sweetheart  might  pick  up 
a  husband.  She  could  see  perfectly  that 
this  was  not,  for  a  moment,  even  what  he 
supposed  she  herself  dreamed  of.  What 
she  had  done  was  simply  to  give  his  fancy 
another  push  into  the  dim  vast  of  trade.  In 
that  direction  it  was  all  alert,  and  she  had 
whisked  before  it  the  mild  fragrance  of  a 
'connection.'  That  was  the  most  he  could 
see  in  any  picture  of  her  keeping  in  with  the 
gentry ;  and  when,  getting  to  the  bottom  of 
this,  she  quickly  proceeded  to  show  him  the 
kind  of  eye  she  turned  on  such  people  and 
to  give  him  a  sketch  of  what  that  eye  dis 
covered,  she  reduced  him  to  the  particular 
confusion  in  which  he  could  still  be  amusing 
to  her. 


X 

'They're  the  most  awful  wretches,  I  assure 
you — the  lot  all  about  there. ' 

'Then  why  do  you  want  to  stay  among 
them?' 

'  My  dear  man,  just  because  they  are.  It 
makes  me  hate  them  so. ' 

'Hate  them?     I  thought  you  liked  them.' 

'Don't  be  stupid.  What  I  "like"  is  just 
to  loathe  them.  You  wouldn't  believe  what 
passes  before  my  eyes. ' 

'Then  why  have  you  never  told  me?  You 
didn't  mention  anything  before  I  left.' 

'Oh,  I  hadn't  got  into  it  then.  It's  the 
sort  of  thing  you  don't  believe  at  first;  you 
have  to  look  round  you  a  bit  and  then  you 
understand.  You  work  into  it  more  and 
more.  Besides,'  the  girl  went  on,  'this  is 
the  time  of  the  year  when  the  worst  lot  come 
up.  They're  simply  packed  together  in 

those  smart  streets.     Talk  of  the  numbers 
67 


68  IN  THE  CAGE 

of  the  poor!  What  /  can  vouch  for  is  the 
numbers  of  the  rich !  There  are  new  ones 
every  day,  and  they  seem  to  get  richer  and 
richer.  Oh,  they  do  come  up!'  she  cried, 
imitating,  for  her  private  recreation — she 
was  sure  it  wouldn't  reach  Mr.  Mudge — the 
low  intonation  of  the  counter-clerk. 

'And  where  do  they  come  from?'  her  com 
panion  candidly  inquired. 

She  had  to  think  a  moment;  then  she 
found  something.  'From  the  "spring  meet 
ings.  "  They  bet  tremendously. ' 

'Well,  they  bet  enough  at  Chalk  Farm,  if 
that's  all. ' 

'It  isn't  all.  It  isn't  a  millionth  part!'  she 
replied  with  some  sharpness.  'It's  immense 
fun' — she  would  tantalise  him.  Then,  as  she 
had  heard  Mrs.  Jordan  say,  and  as  the 
ladies  at  Cockers  even  sometimes  wired,  'It's 
quite  too  dreadful!'  She  could  fully  feel 
how  it  was  Mr.  Mudge's  propriety,  which 
was  extreme — he  had  a  horror  of  coarseness 
and  attended  a  Wesleyan  chapel — that  pre 
vented  his  asking  for  details.  But  she  gave 


IN  THE  CAGE  69 

him  some  of  the  more  innocuous  in  spite  of 
himself,  especially  putting  before  him  how, 
at  Simpkin's  and  Ladle's,  they  all  made  the 
money  fly.  That  was  indeed  what  he  liked 
to  hear :  the  connection  was  not  direct,  but 
one  was  somehow  more  in  the  right  place 
where  the  money  was  flying  than  where  it 
was  simply  and  meagrely  nesting.  It 
enlivened  the  air,  he  had  to  acknowledge, 
much  less  at  Chalk  Farm  than  in  the  dis 
trict  in  which  his  beloved  so  oddly  enjoyed 
her  footing.  She  gave  him,  she  could  see, 
a  restless  sense  that  these  might  be  familiari 
ties  not  to  be  sacrificed;  germs,  possibilities, 
faint  foreshowings — heaven  knew  what — 
of  the  initiation  it  would  prove  profitable  to 
have  arrived  at  when,  in  the  fulness  of  time, 
he  should  have  his  own  shop  in  some  such 
paradise.  What  really  touched  him — that 
was  discernible — was  that  she  could  feed  him 
with  so  much  mere  vividness  of  reminder, 
keep  before  him,  as  by  the  play  of  a  fan,  the 
very  wind  of  the  swift  banknotes  and  the 
charm  of  the  existence  of  a  class  that  Provi- 


7o  IN  THE  CAGE 

dence  had  raised  up  to  be  the  blessing  of 
grocers.  He  liked  to  think  that  the  class  was 
there,  that  it  was  always  there,  and  that  she 
contributed  in  her  slight  but  appreciable 
degree  to  keep  it  up  to  the  mark.  He 
couldn't  have  formulated  his  theory  of  the 
matter,  but  the  exuberance  of  the  aristocracy 
was  the  advantage  of  trade,  and  everything 
was  knit  together  in  a  richness  of  pattern 
that  it  was  good  to  follow  with  one's  finger 
tips.  It  was  a  comfort  to  him  to  be  thus 
assured  that  there  were  no  symptoms  of  a 
drop.  What  did  the  sounder,  as  she  called 
it,  nimbly  worked,  do  but  keep  the  ball 
going? 

What  it  came  to,  therefore,  for  Mr.  Mudge, 
was  that  all  enjoyments  were,  in  short, 
inter-related,  and  that  the  more  people  had 
the  more  they  wanted  to  have.  The  more 
flirtations,  as  he  might  roughly  express  it, 
the  more  cheese  and  pickles.  He  had  even 
in  his  own  small  way  been  dimly  struck  with 
the  concatenation  between  the  tender  passion 
and  cheap  champagne.  What  he  would  have 


IN  THE  CAGE  71 

liked  to  say  had  he  been  able  to  work  out  his 
thought  to  the  end  was:  'I  see,  I  see.  Lash 
them  up  then,  lead  them  on,  keep  them 
going:  some  of  it  can't  help,  some  time, 
coming  our  way. '  Yet  he  was  troubled  by 
the  suspicion  of  subtleties  on  his  companion's 
part  that  spoiled  the  straight  view.  He 
couldn't  understand  people's  hating  what 
they  liked  or  liking  what  they  hated ;  above 
all  it  hurt  him  somewhere — for  he  had  his 
private  delicacies — to  see  anything  but  money 
made  out  of  his  betters.  To  be  curious  at 
the  expense  of  the  gentry  was  vaguely 
wrong;  the  only  thing  that  was  distinctly 
right  was  to  be  prosperous.  Wasn't  it  just 
because  they  were  up  there  aloft  that  they 
were  lucrative?  He  concluded,  at  any  rate, 
by  saying  to  his  young  friend:  'If  it's  im 
proper  for  you  to  remain  at  Cocker's,  then 
that  falls  in  exactly  with  the  other  reasons 
that  I  have  put  before  you  for  your  removal. ' 
'Improper?' — her  smile  became  a  long, 
wide  look  at  him.  'My  dear  boy,  there's  no 
one  like  you!' 


72  IN  THE  CAGE 

'I  dare  say,'  he  laughed;  'but  that  doesn't 
help  the  question. ' 

'Well,'  she  returned,  'I  can't  give  up  my 
friends.  I'm  making  even  more  than  Mrs. 
Jordan. ' 

Mr.  Mudge  considered.  'How much  is  she 
making?' 

'Oh,  you  dear  donkey!' — and,  regardless 
of  all  the  Regent's  Park,  she  patted  his 
cheek.  This  was  the  sort  of  moment  at 
which  she  was  absolutely  tempted  to  tell 
him  that  she  liked  to  be  near  Park  Chambers. 
There  was  a  fascination  in  the  idea  of  see 
ing  if,  on  a  mention  of  Captain  Everard,  he 
wouldn't  do  what  she  thought  he  might; 
wouldn't  weigh  against  the  obvious  objec 
tion  the  still  more  obvious  advantage.  The 
advantage,  of  course,  could  only  strike 
him  at  the  best  as  rather  fantastic;  but  it 
was  always  to  the  good  to  keep  hold  when 
you  had  hold,  and  such  an  attitude  would 
also  after  all  involve  a  high  tribute  to  her 
fidelity.  Of  one  thing  she  absolutely  never 
doubted :  Mr.  Mudge  believed  in  her  with  a 


IN  THE  CAGE  73 

belief — !  She  believed  in  herself,  too,  for 
that  matter:  if  there  was  a  thing  in  the 
world  no  one  could  charge  her  with,  it  was 
being  the  kind  of  low  barmaid  person  who 
rinsed  tumblers  and  bandied  slang.  But 
she  forbore  as  yet  to  speak;  she  had  not 
spoken  even  to  Mrs.  Jordan ;  and  the  hush 
that  on  her  lips  surrounded  the  Captain's 
name  maintained  itself  as  a  kind  of  symbol 
of  the  success  that,  up  to  this  time,  had 
attended  something  or  other — she  couldn't 
have  said  what — that  she  humoured  herself 
with  calling,  without  words,  her  relation 
with  him. 


XI 

She  would  have  admitted  indeed  that  it 
consisted  of  little  more  than  the  fact  that  his 
absences,  however  frequent  and  however 
long,  always  ended  with  his  turning  up 
again.  It  was  nobody's  business  in  the 
world  but  her  own  if  that  fact  continued  to 
be  enough  for  her.  It  was  of  course  not 
enough  just  in  itself;  what  it  had  taken  on 
to  make  it  so  was  the  extraordinary  posses 
sion  of  the  elements  of  his  life  that  memory 
and  attention  had  at  last  given  her.  There 
came  a  day  when  this  possession,  on  the 
girl's  part,  actually  seemed  to  enjoy,  between 
them,  while  their  eyes  met,  a  tacit  recogni 
tion  that  was  half  a  joke  and  half  a  deep 
solemnity.  He  bade  her  good-morning 
always  now ;  he  often  quite  raised  his  hat  to 
her.  He  passed  a  remark  when  there  was 
time  or  room,  and  once  she  went  so  far  as 
to  say  to  him  that  she  had  not  seen  him  for 

75 


76  IN  THE  CAGE 

'ages. '  'Ages'  was  the  word  she  consciously 
and  carefully,  though  a  trifle  tremulously, 
used;  'ages'  was  exactly  what  she  meant. 
To  this  he  replied  in  terms  doubtless  less 
anxiously  selected,  but  perhaps  on  that 
account  not  the  less  remarkable,  'Oh  yes, 
hasn't  it  been  awfully  wet?'  That  was  a 
specimen  of  their  give  and  take ;  it  fed  her 
fancy  that  no  form  of  intercourse  so  tran 
scendent  and  distilled  had  ever  been  estab 
lished  on  earth.  Everything,  so  far  as  they 
chose  to  consider  it  so,  might  mean  almost 
anything.  The  want  of  margin  in  the  cage, 
when  he  peeped  through  the  bars,  wholly 
ceased  to  be  appreciable.  It  was  a  drawback 
only  in  superficial  commerce.  With  Captain 
Everard  she  had  simply  the  margin  of  the 
universe.  It  may  be  imagined,  therefore, 
how  their  unuttered  reference  to  all  she 
knew  about  him  could,  in  this  immensity, 
play  at  its  ease.  Every  time  he  handed  in 
a  telegram  it  was  an  addition  to  her  knowl 
edge  :  what  did  his  constant  smile  mean  to 
mark  if  it  didn't  mean  to  mark  that?  He 


IN  THE  CAGE  77 

never  came  into  the  place  without  saying  to 
her  in  this  manner:  'Oh  yes,  you  have  me 
by  this  time  so  completely  at  your  mercy 
that  it  doesn't  in  the  least  matter  what  I 
give  you  now.  You've  become  a  comfort,  I 
assure  you!' 

She  had  only  two  torments ;  the  greatest 
of  which  was  that  she  couldn't,  not  even 
once  or  twice,  touch  with  him  on  some  indi 
vidual  fact.  She  would  have  given  anything 
to  have  been  able  to  allude  to  one  of  his 
friends  by  name,  to  one  of  his  engagements 
by  date,  to  one  of  his  difficulties  by  the  solu 
tion.  She  would  have  given  almost  as  much 
for  just  the  right  chance — it  would  have 
to  be  tremendously  right — to  show  him  in 
some  sharp,  sweet  way  that  she  had  perfectly 
penetrated  the  greatest  of  these  last  and  now 
lived  with  it  in  a  kind  of  heroism  of  sym 
pathy.  He  was  in  love  with  a  woman  to 
whom,  and  to  any  view  of  whom,  a  lady- 
telegraphist,  and  especially  one  who  passed 
a  life  among  hams  and  cheeses,  was  as  the 
sand  on  the  floor;  and  what  her  dreams 


78  IN  THE  CAGE 

desired  was  the  possibility  of  it  somehow 
coming  to  him  that  her  own  interest  in  him 
could  take  a  pure  and  noble  account  of  such 
an  infatuation  and  even  of  such  an  impro 
priety.  As  yet,  however,  she  could  only  rub 
along  with  the  hope  that  an  accident,  sooner 
or  later,  might  give  her  a  lift  toward  pop 
ping  out  with  something  that  would  surprise 
and  perhaps  even,  some  fine  day,  assist  him. 
What  could  people  mean,  moreover — 
cheaply  sarcastic  people — by  not  feeling  all 
that  could  be  got  out  of  the  weather?  She 
felt  it  all,  and  seemed  literally  to  feel  it 
most  when  she  went  quite  wrong,  speaking 
of  the  stuffy  days  as  cold,  of  the  cold  ones 
as  stuffy,  and  betraying  how  little  she  knew, 
in  her  cage,  of  whether  it  was  foul  or  fair. 

It  was,  for  that  matter,  always  stuffy  at 
Cocker's,  and  she  finally  settled  down  to  the 
safe  proposition  that  the  outside  element  was 
'changeable.'  Anything  seemed  true  that 
made  him  so  radiantly  assent. 

This  indeed  is  a  small  specimen  of  her 
cultivation  of  insidious  ways  of  making 


IN  THE  CAGE  79 

things  easy  for  him — ways  to  which  of  course 
she  couldn't  be  at  all  sure  that  he  did  real 
justice.  Real  justice  was  not  of  this  world: 
she  had  had  too  often  to  come  back  to  that ; 
yet,  strangely,  happiness  was,  and  her  traps 
had  to  be  set  for  it  in  a  manner  to  keep  them 
unperceived  by  Mr.  Buckton  and  the  coun 
ter-clerk.  The  most  she  could  hope  for  apart 
from  the  question,  which  constantly  flick 
ered  up  and  died  down,  of  the  divine  chance 
of  his  consciously  liking  her,  would  be  that, 
without  analysing  it,  he  should  arrive  at  a 
vague  sense  that  Cocker's  was — well,  attrac 
tive;  easier,  smoother,  sociably  brighter, 
slightly  more  picturesque,  in  short  more  pro 
pitious  in  general  to  his  little  affairs,  than 
any  other  establishment  just  thereabouts. 
She  was  quite  aware  that  they  couldn't  be, 
in  so  huddled  a  hole,  particularly  quick ;  but 
she  found  her  account  in  the  slowness — sh^ 
certainly  could  bear  it  if  he  could.  The 
great  pang  was  that,  just  thereabouts,  post- 
offices  were  so  awfully  thick.  She  was 
always  seeing  him,  in  imagination,  in  other 


80  IN  THE  CAGE 

places  and  with  other  girls.  But  she  would 
defy  any  other  girl  to  follow  him  as  she  fol 
lowed.  And  though  they  weren't,  for  so 
many  reasons,  quick  at  Cocker's,  she  could 
hurry  for  him  when,  through  an  intimation 
light  as  air,  she  gathered  that  he  was 
pressed. 

When  hurry  was,  better  still,  impossible, 
it  was  because  of  the  pleasantest  thing  of 
all,  the  particular  element  of  their  contact — 
she  would  have  called  it  their  friendship — 
that  consisted  of  an  almost  humourous  treat 
ment  of  the  look  of  some  of  his  words.  They 
would  never  perhaps  have  grown  half  so 
intimate  if  he  had  not,  by  the  blessing  of 
heaven,  formed  some  of  his  letters  with  a 
queerness — !  It  was  positive  that  the  queer- 
ness  could  scarce  have  been  greater  if  he 
had  practised  it  for  the  very  purpose  of  bring 
ing  their  heads  together  over  it  as  far  as  was 
possible  to  heads  on  different  sides  of  a  cage. 
It  had  taken  her  in  reality  but  once  or 
twice  to  master  these  tricks,  but,  at  the  cost 
of  striking  him  perhaps  as  stupid,  she  could 


IN  THE  CAGE  81 

still  challenge  them  when  circumstances 
favoured.  The  great  circumstance  that 
favoured  was  that  she  sometimes  actually 
believed  he  knew  she  only  feigned  perplex 
ity.  If  he  knew  it,  therefore,  he  tolerated 
it;  if  he  tolerated  it  he  came  back;  and  if 
he  came  back  he  liked  her.  This  was  her 
seventh  heaven ;  and  she  didn't  ask  much  of 
his  liking — she  only  asked  of  it  to  reach  the 
point  of  his  not  going  away  because  of  her 
own.  He  had  at  times  to  be  away  for 
weeks;  he  had  to  lead  his  life;  he  had  to 
travel — there  were  places  to  which  he  was 
constantly  wiring  for  'rooms' :  all  this  she 
granted  him,  forgave  him;  in  fact,  in  the 
long  run,  literally  blessed  and  thanked  him 
for.  If  he  had  to  lead  his  life,  that  pre 
cisely  fostered  his  leading  it  so  much  by 
telegraph :  therefore  the  benediction  was  to 
come  in  when  he  could.  That  was  all  she 
asked — that  he  shouldn't  wholly  deprive  her. 
Sometimes  she  almost  felt  that  he  couldn't 
have  done  so  even  had  he  been  minded,  on 
account  of  the  web  of  revelation  that  was 


82  IN  THE  CAGE 

woven  between  them.  She  quite  thrilled 
herself  with  thinking  what,  with  such  a  lot 
of  material,  a  bad  girl  would  do.  It  would 
be  a  scene  better  than  many  in  her  ha'penny 
novels,  this  going  to  him  in  the  dusk  of 
evening  at  Park  Chambers  and  letting  him 
at  last  have  it.  'I  know  too  much  about  a 
certain  person  now  not  to  put  it  to  you — 
excuse  my  being  so  lurid — that  it's  quite 
worth  your  while  to  buy  me  off.  Come, 
therefore,  buy  me!'  There  was  a  point 
indeed  at  which  such  flights  had  to  drop 
again — the  point  of  an  unreadiness  to  name, 
when  it  came  to  that,  the  purchasing 
medium.  It  wouldn't,  certainly,  be  any 
thing  so  gross  as  money,  and  the  matter 
accordingly  remained  rather  vague,  all  the 
more  that  she  was  not  a  bad  girl.  It  was 
not  for  any  such  reason  as  might  have 
aggravated  a  mere  minx  that  she  often 
hoped  he  would  again  bring  Cissy.  The 
difficulty  of  this,  however,  was  constantly 
present  to  her,  for  the  kind  of  communion 
to  which  Cocker's  so  richly  ministered  rested 


IN  THE  CAGE  83 

on  the  fact  that  Cissy  and  he  were  so  often 
in  different  places.  She  knew  by  this  time 
all  the  places — Suchbury,  Monkhouse,  White  - 
roy,  Finches — and  even  how  the  parties,  on 
these  occasions,  were  composed;  but  her 
subtlety  found  ways  to  make  her  knowledge 
fairly  protect  and  promote  their  keeping,  as 
she  had  heard  Mrs.  Jordan  say,  in  touch. 
So,  when  he  actually  sometimes  smiled  as 
if  he  really  felt  the  awkwardness  of  giving 
her  again  one  of  the  same  old  addresses,  all 
her  being  went  out  in  the  desire — which  her 
face  must  have  expressed — that  he  should 
recognise  her  forbearance  to  criticise  as  one 
of  the  finest,  tenderest  sacrifices  a  woman 
had  ever  made  for  love. 


XII 

She  was  occasionally  worried,  all  the 
same,  by  the  impression  that  these  sacrifices, 
great  as  they  were,  were  nothing  to  those 
that  his  own  passion  had  imposed ;  if  indeed 
it  was  not  rather  the  passion  of  his  confed 
erate,  which  had  caught  him  up  and  was 
whirling  him  round  like  a  great  steam-wheel. 
He  was  at  any  rate  in  the  strong  grip  of  a 
dizzy,  splendid  fate ;  the  wild  wind  of  his  life 
blew  him  straight  before  it.  Didn't  she 
catch  in  his  face,  at  times,  even  through 
his  smile  and  his  happy  habit,  the  gleam  of 
that  pale  glare  with  which  a  bewildered 
victim  appeals,  as  he  passes,  to  some  pair 
of  pitying  eyes?  He  perhaps  didn't  even 
himself  know  how  scared  he  was;  but  she 
knew.  They  were  in  danger,  they  were  in 
danger,  Captain  Everard  and  Lady  Bradeen : 
it  beat  every  novel  in  the  shop.  She 

thought  of  Mr.  Mudge  and  his  safe  senti- 
85 


86  IN  THE  CAGE 

ment;  she  thought  of  herself  and  blushed 
even  more  for  her  tepid  response  to  it.  It 
was  a  comfort  to  her  at  such  moments  to 
feel  that  in  another  relation — a  relation  sup 
plying  that  affinity  with  her  nature  that  Mr. 
Mudge,  deluded  creature,  would  never  sup 
ply — she  should  have  been  no  more  tepid 
than  her  ladyship.  Her  deepest  soundings 
were  on  two  or  three  occasions  of  finding 
herself  almost  sure  that,  if  she  dared,  her 
ladyship's  lover  would  have  gathered  relief 
from  'speaking'  to  her.  She  literally  fancied 
once  or  twice  that,  projected  as  he  was 
toward  his  doom,  her  own  eyes  struck  him, 
while  the  air  roared  in  his  ears,  as  the  one 
pitying  pair  in  the  crowd.  But  how  could 
he  speak  to  her  while  she  sat  sandwiched 
there  between  the  counter-clerk  and  the 
sounder? 

She  had  long  ago,  in  her  comings  and 
goings,  made  acquaintance  with  Park 
Chambers  and  reflected,  as  she  looked  up  at 
their  luxurious  front,  that  they,  of  course, 
would  supply  the  ideal  setting  for  the  ideal 


IN  THE  CAGE  87 

speech.  There  was  not  a  picture  in  London 
that,  before  the  season  was  over,  was  more 
stamped  upon  her  brain.  She  went  round 
about  to  pass  it,  for  it  was  not  on  the  short 
way ;  she  passed  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
street  and  always  looked  up,  though  it  had 
taken  her  a  long  time  to  be  sure  of  the 
particular  set  of  windows.  She  had  made 
that  out  at  last  by  an  act  of  audacity  that,  at 
the  time,  had  almost  stopped  her  heart 
beats  and  that,  in  retrospect,  greatly  quick 
ened  her  blushes.  One  evening,  late,  she 
had  lingered  and  watched — watched  for 
some  moment  when  the  porter,  who  was  in 
uniform  and  often  on  the  steps,  had  gone  in 
with  a  visitor.  Then  she  followed  boldly, 
on  the  calculation  that  he  would  have  taken 
the  visitor  up  and  that  the  hall  would  be 
free.  The  hall  was  free,  and  the  electric 
light  played  over  the  gilded  and  lettered 
board  that  showed  the  names  and  numbers 
of  the  occupants  of  the  different  floors. 
What  she  wanted  looked  straight  at  her — 
Captain  Everard  was  on  the  third.  It  was 


88  IN  THE  CAGE 

as  if,  in  the  immense  intimacy  of  this,  they 
were,  for  the  instant  and  the  first  time,  face 
to  face  outside  the  cage.  Alas,  they  were 
face  to  face  but  a  second  or  two:  she  was 
whirled  out  on  the  wings  of  a  panic  fear 
that  he  might  just  then  be  entering  or  issu 
ing.  This  fear  was  indeed,  in  her  shameless 
deflections,  never  very  far  from  her,  and 
was  mixed  in  the  oddest  way  with  depres 
sions  and  disappointments.  It  was  dreadful, 
as  she  trembled  by,  to  run  the  risk  of  looking 
to  him  as  if  she  basely  hung  about ;  and  yet 
it  was  dreadful  to  be  obliged  to  pass  only  at 
such  moments  as  put  an  encounter  out  of 
the  question. 

At  the  horrible  hour  of  her  first  coming 
to  Cocker's  he  was  always — it  was  to  be 
hoped — snug  in  bed ;  and  at  the  hour  of  her 
final  departure  he  was  of  course — she  had 
such  things  all  on  her  fingers' -ends — dressing 
for  dinner.  We  may  let  it  pass  that  if  she 
could  not  bring  herself  to  hover  till  he  was 
dressed,  this  was  simply  because  such  a 
process  for  such  a  person  could  only  be 


IN  THE  CAGE  89 

terribly  prolonged.  When  she  went  in  the 
middle  of  the  day  to  her  own  dinner  she 
had  too  little  time  to  do  anything  but  go 
straight,  though  it  must  be  added  that  for 
a  real  certainty  she  would  joyously  have 
omitted  the  repast.  She  had  made  up  her 
mind  as  to  there  being  on  the  whole  no 
decent  pretext  to  justify  her  flitting  casually 
past  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning.  That 
was  the  hour  at  which,  if  the  ha'penny 
novels  were  not  all  wrong,  he  probably  came 
home  for  the  night.  She  was  therefore 
reduced  to  merely  picturing  that  miraculous 
meeting  toward  which  a  hundred  impossibili 
ties  would  have  to  conspire.  But  if  nothing 
was  more  impossible  than  the  fact,  nothing 
was  more  intense  than  the  vision.  What 
may  not,  we  can  only  moralise,  take  place  in 
the  quickened,  muffled  perception  of  a  girl 
of  a  certain  kind  of  soul?  All  our  young 
friend's  native  distinction,  her  refinement  of 
personal  grain,  of  heredity,  of  pride,  took 
refuge  in  this  small  throbbing  spot;  for 
when  she  was  most  conscious  of  the  abjec- 


90  IN  THE  CAGE 

tion  of  her  vanity  and  the  pitifulness  of  her 
little  nutters  and  manoeuvres,  then  the  con 
solation  and  the  redemption  were  most  sure 
to  shine  before  her  in  some  just  discernible 
sign.  He  did  like  her! 


XIII 

He  never  brought  Cissy  back,  but  Cissy 
came  one  day  without  him,  as  fresh  as  before 
from  the  hands  of  Marguerite,  or  only,  at 
the  season's  end,  a  trifle  less  fresh.  She 
was,  however,  distinctly  less  serene.  She 
had  brought  nothing  with  her  and  looked 
about  with  some  impatience  for  the  forms 
and  the  place  to  write.  The  latter  conveni 
ence,  at  Cocker's,  was  obscure  and  barely 
adequate,  and  her  clear  voice  had  the  light 
note  of  disgust  which  her  lover's  never 
showed  as  she  responded  with  a  'There?' 
of  surprise  to  the  gesture  made  by  the 
counter-clerk  in  answer  to  her  sharp 
inquiry.  Our  young  friend  was  busy  with 
half-a-dozen  people,  but  she  had  despatched 
them  in  her  most  business-like  manner  by 
the  time  her  ladyship  flung  through  the  bars 
the  light  of  reappearance.  Then  the  direct 
ness  with  which  the  girl  managed  to  receive 
91 


92  IN  THE  CAGE 

this  missive  was  the  result  of  the  concen 
tration  that  had  caused  her  to  make  the 
stamps  fly  during  the  few  minutes  occupied 
by  the  production  of  it.  This  concentra 
tion,  in  turn,  may  be  described  as  the  effect 
of  the  apprehension  of  imminent  relief.  It 
was  nineteen  days,  counted  and  checked  off, 
since  she  had  seen  the  object  of  her  homage; 
and  as,  had  he  been  in  London,  she  should, 
with  his  habits,  have  been  sure  to  see  him 
often,  she  was  now  about  to  learn  what 
other  spot  his  presence  might  just  then 
happen  to  sanctify.  For  she  thought  of 
them,  the  other  spots,  as  ecstatically 
conscious  of  it,  expressively  happy  in  it. 

But,  gracious,  how  handsome  was  her 
ladyship,  and  what  an  added  price  it  gave 
him  that  the  air  of  intimacy  he  threw  out 
should  have  flowed  originally  from  such  a 
source !  The  girl  looked  straight  through  the 
cage  at  the  eyes  and  lips  that  must  so  often 
have  been  so  near  his  own — looked  at  them 
with  a  strange  passion  that,  for  an  instant, 
had  the  result  of  filling  out  some  of  the  gaps, 


IN  THE  CAGE  93 

supplying  the  missing  answers,  in  his  cor 
respondence.  Then,  as  she  made  out  that 
the  features  she  thus  scanned  and  associated 
were  totally  unaware  of  it,  that  they  glowed 
only  with  the  color  of  quite  other  and  not 
at  all  guessable  thoughts,  this  directly 
added  to  their  splendour,  gave  the  girl  the 
sharpest  impression  she  had  yet  received  of 
the  uplifted,  the  unattainable  plains  of 
heaven,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  caused 
her  to  thrill  with  a  sense  of  the  high  com 
pany  she  did  somehow  keep.  She  was  with 
the  absent  through  her  ladyship  and  with 
her  ladyship  through  the  absent.  The  only 
pang — but  it  didn't  matter — was  the  proof 
in  the  admirable  face,  in  the  sightless  pre 
occupation  of  its  possessor,  that  the  latter 
hadn't  a  notion  of  her.  Her  folly  had  gone 
to  the  point  of  half  believing  that  the  other 
party  to  the  affair  must  sometimes  mention 
in  Eaton  Square  the  extraordinary  little 
person  at  the  place  from  which  he  so  often 
wired.  Yet  the  perception  of  her  visitor's 
blankness  actually  helped  this  extraordinary 


94  IN  THE  CAGE 

little  person,  the  next  instant,  to  take 
refuge  in  a  reflection  that  could  be  as  proud 
as  it  liked.  'How  little  she  knows,  how 
little  she  knows!'  the  girl  cried  to  herself; 
for  what  did  that  show  after  all  but  that 
Captain  Everard's  telegraphic  confidant  was 
Captain  Everard's  charming  secret?  Our 
young  friend's  perusal  of  her  ladyship's 
telegram  was  literally  prolonged  by  a 
momentary  daze:  what  swam  between  her 
and  the  words,  making  her  see  them  as 
through  rippled,  shallow,  sun  shot  water, 
was  the  great,  the  perpetual  flood  of  'How 
much  /  know — how  much  /  know!'  This 
produced  a  delay  in  her  catching  that,  on 
the  face,  these  words  didn't  give  her  what 
she  wanted,  though  she  was  prompt  enough 
with  her  remembrance  that  her  grasp  was, 
half  the  time,  just  of  what  was  not  on  the 
face.  'Miss  Dolman,  Parade  Lodge,  Parade 
Terrace,  Dover.  Let  him  instantly  know 
right  one,  Hotel  De  France,  Ostend.  Make 
it  seven  nine  four  nine  six  one.  Wire  me 
alternative  Burfield's." 


IN  THE  CAGE  95 

The  girl  slowly  counted.  Then  he  was  at 
Ostend.  This  hooked  on  with  so  sharp  a 
click  that,  not  to  feel  she  was  as  quickly 
letting  it  all  slip  from  her,  she  had  abso 
lutely  to  hold  it  a  minute  longer  and  to  do 
something  to  that  end.  Thus  it  was  that 
she  did  on  this  occasion  what  she  never  did, 
threw  off  an  'Answer  paid?'  that  sounded 
officious,  but  that  she  partly  made  up  for  by 
deliberately  affixing  the  stamps  and  by 
waiting  till  she  had  done  so  to  give  change. 
She  had,  for  so  much  coolness,  the  strength 
that  she  considered  she  knew  all  about  Miss 
Dolman. 

'Yes — paid.'  She  saw  all  sorts  of  things 
in  this  reply,  even  to  a  small,  suppressed 
start  of  surprise  at  so  correct  an  assump 
tion  ;  even  to  an  attempt,  the  next  minute, 
at  a  fresh  air  of  detachment.  '  How  much, 
with  the  answer?"  The  calculation  was  not 
abstruse,  but  our  intense  observer  required 
a  moment  more  to  make  it,  and  this  gave 
her  ladyship  time  for  a  second  thought. 
'Oh,  just  wait!'  The  white,  begemmed 


96  IN  THE  CAGE 

hand  bared  to  write  rose  in  sudden  nervous 
ness  to  the  side  of  the  wonderful  face  which, 
with  eyes  of  anxiety  for  the  paper  on  the 
counter,  she  brought  closer  to  the  bars  of 
the  cage.  'I  think  I  must  alter  a  word!' 
On  this  she  recovered  her  telegram  and 
looked  over  it  again;  but  she  had  a  new, 
obvious  trouble,  and  studied  it  without 
deciding  and  with  much  of  the  effect  of 
making  our  young  woman  watch  her. 

This  personage,  meanwhile,  at  the  sight 
of  her  expression,  had  decided  on  the  spot. 
If  she  had  always  been  sure  they  were  in 
danger,  her  ladyship's  expression  was  the 
best  possible  sign  of  it.  There  was  a  word 
wrong,  but  she  had  lost  the  right  one,  and 
much,  clearly,  depended  on  her  finding  it 
again.  The  girl,  therefore,  sufficiently 
estimating  the  affluence  of  customers  and 
the  distraction  of  Mr.  Buckton  and  the 
counter-clerk,  took  the  jump  and  gave  it. 
'Isn't  it  Cooper's?' 

It  was  as  if  she  had  bodily  leaped — cleared 
the  top  of  the  cage  and  alighted  on  her 


IN  THE  CAGE  97 

interlocutress.  'Cooper's?' — the  stare  was 
heightened  by  a  blush.  Yes,  she  had  made 
Juno  blush. 

This  was  all  the  more  reason  for  going 
on.  'I  mean  instead  of  Burfield's. ' 

Our  young  friend  fairly  pitied  her;  she 
had  made  her  in  an  instant  so  helpless,  and 
yet  not  a  bit  haughty  nor  outraged.  She 
was  only  mystified  and  scared.  'Oh,  you 
know ?' 

'Yes,  I  know!'  Our  young  friend  smiled, 
meeting  the  other's  eyes,  and,  having  made 
Juno  blush,  proceeded  to  patronise  her. 
'/'//  do  it' — she  put  out  a  competent  hand. 
Her  ladyship  only  submitted,  confused  and 
bewildered,  all  presence  of  mind  quite  gone ; 
and  the  next  moment  the  telegram  was  in 
the  cage  again  and  its  author  out  of  the  shop. 
Then  quickly,  boldly,  under  all  the  eyes 
that  might  have  witnessed  her  tampering, 
the  extraordinary  little  person  at  Cocker's 
made  the  proper  change.  People  were 
really  too  giddy,  and  if  they  were,  in  a  cer 
tain  case,  to  be  caught,  it  shouldn't  be  the 


98  IN  THE  CAGE 

fault  of  her  own  grand  memory.  Hadn't  it 
been  settled  weeks  before? — for  Miss  Dol 
man  it  was  always  to  be  'Cooper's.' 


XIV 

But  the  summer  'holidays'  brought  a 
marked  difference;  they  were  holidays  for 
almost  every  one  but  the  animals  in  the  cage. 
The  August  days  were  flat  and  dry,  and, 
with  so  little  to  feed  it,  she  was  conscious  of 
the  ebb  of  her  interest  in  the  secrets  of  the 
refined.  She  was  in  a  position  to  follow  the 
refined  to  the  extent  of  knowing — they  had 
made  so  many  of  their  arrangements  with 
her  aid — exactly  where  they  were ;  yet  she 
felt  quite  as  if  the  panorama  had  ceased 
unrolling  and  the  band  stopped  playing.  A 
stray  member  of  the  latter  occasionally 
turned  up,  but  the  communications  that 
passed  before  her  bore  now  largely  on  rooms 
at  hotels,  prices  of  furnished  houses,  hours 
of  trains,  dates  of  sailings  and  arrange 
ments  for  being  'met' :  she  found  them  for 
the  most  part  prosaic  and  coarse.  The  only 
thing  was  that  they  brought  into  her  stuffy 

99 


ioo  IN  THE  CAGE 

corner  as  straight  a  whiff  of  Alpine  mead 
ows  and  Scotch  moors  as  she  might  hope 
ever  to  inhale;  there  were  moreover,  in 
especial,  fat,  hot,  dull  ladies  who  had  out 
with  her,  to  exasperation,  the  terms  for  sea 
side  lodgings,  which  struck  her  as  huge,  and 
the  matter  of  the  number  of  beds  required, 
which  was  not  less  portentous:  this  in 
reference  to  places  of  which  the  names — 
Eastbourne,  Folkestone,  Cromer,  Scarbor 
ough,  Whitby — tormented  her  with  some 
thing  of  the  sound  of  the  plash  of  water  that 
haunts  the  traveller  in  the  desert.  She  had 
not  been  out  of  London  for  a  dozen  years, 
and  the  only  thing  to  give  a  taste  to  the 
present  dead  weeks  was  the  spice  of  a  chronic 
resentment.  The  sparse  customers,  the 
people  she  did  see,  were  the  people  who 
were  'just  off' — off  on  the  decks  of  flut 
tered  yachts,  off  to  the  uttermost  point  of 
rocky  headlands  where  the  very  breeze  was 
then  playing  for  the  want  of  which  she  said 
to  herself  that  she  sickened. 

There  was  accordingly  a  sense  in  which, 


IN  THE  CAGE  101 

at  such  a  period,  the  great  differences  of  the 
human  condition  could  press  upon  her  more 
than  ever;  a  circumstance  drawing  fresh 
force,  in  truth,  from  the  very  fact  of  the 
chance  that  at  last,  for  a  change,  did  squarely 
meet  her — the  chance  to  be  'off,'  for  a  bit, 
almost  as  far  as  anybody.  They  took  their 
turns  in  the  cage  as  they  took  them  both  in 
the  shop  and  at  Chalk  Farm,  and  she  had 
known  these  two  months  that  time  was  to 
be  allowed  in  September — no  less  than 
eleven  days — for  her  personal,  private  holi 
day.  Much  of  her  recent  intercourse  with 
Mr.  Mudge  had  consisted  of  the  hopes  and 
fears,  expressed  mainly  by  himself,  involved 
in  the  question  of  their  getting  the  same 
dates — a  question  that,  in  proportion  as  the 
delight  seemed  assured,  spread  into  a  sea  of 
speculation  over  the  choice  of  where  and 
how.  All  through  July,  on  the  Sunday 
evenings  and  at  such  other  odd  times  as  he 
could  seize,  he  had  flooded  their  talk  with 
wild  waves  of  calculation.  It  was  prac 
tically  settled  that,  with  her  mother,  some- 


102  IN  THE  CAGE 

where  'on  the  south  coast'  (a  phrase  of 
which  she  liked  the  sound)  they  should  put 
in  their  allowance  together ;  but  she  already 
felt  the  prospect  quite  weary  and  worn  with 
the  way  he  went  round  and  round  on  it.  It 
had  become  his  sole  topic,  the  theme  alike 
of  his  most  solemn  prudences  and  most 
placid  jests,  to  which  every  opening  led  for 
return  and  revision  and  in  which  every  little 
flower  of  a  foretaste  was  pulled  up  as  soon  as 
planted.  He  had  announced  at  the  earliest 
day — characterizing  the  whole  business,  from 
that  moment,  as  their  'plans,'  under  which 
name  he  handled  it  as  a  syndicate  handles  a 
Chinese,  or  other,  Loan — he  had  promptly 
declared  that  the  question  must  be  thor 
oughly  studied,  and  he  produced,  on  the 
whole  subject,  from  day  to  day,  an  amount 
of  information  that  excited  her  wonder  and 
even,  not  a  little,  as  she  frankly  let  him 
know,  her  disdain.  When  she  thought  of 
the  danger  in  which  another  pair  of  lovers 
rapturously  lived,  she  inquired  of  him  anew 
why  he  could  leave  nothing  to  chance. 


IN  THE  CAGE  103 

Then  she  got  for  answer  that  this  profundity 
was  just  his  pride,  and  he  pitted  Ramsgate 
against  Bournemouth  and  even  Boulogne 
against  Jersey — for  he  had  great  ideas — with 
all  the  mastery  of  detail  that  was  some  day, 
professionally,  to  carry  him  far. 

The  longer  the  time  since  she  had  seen 
Captain  Everard,  the  more  she  was  booked, 
as  she  called  it,  to  pass  Park  Chambers ;  and 
this  was  the  sole  amusement  that,  in  the 
lingering  August  days  and  the  long,  sad 
twilights,  it  was  left  her  to  cultivate.  She 
had  long  since  learned  to  know  it  for  a 
feeble  one,  though  its  feebleness  was  per 
haps  scarce  the  reason  for  her  saying  to 
herself  each  evening  as  her  time  for  de 
parture  approached:  'No,  no — not  to-night.' 
She  never  failed  of  that  silent  remark,  any 
more  than  she  failed  of  feeling,  in  some 
deeper  place  than  she  had  even  yet  fully 
sounded,  that  one's  remarks  were  as  weak  as 
straws  and  that,  however  one  might  indulge 
in  them  at  eight  o'clock,  one's  fate  infallibly 
declared  itself  in  absolute  indifference  to 


104  IN  THE  CAGE 

them  at  about  eight-fifteen.  Remarks  were 
remarks,  and  very  well  for  that;  but  fate 
was  fate,  and  this  young  lady's  was  to  pass 
Park  Chambers  every  night  in  the  working 
week.  Out  of  the  immensity  of  her  knowl 
edge  of  the  life  of  the  world  there  bloomed 
on  these  occasions  a  specific  remembrance 
that  it  was  regarded  in  that  region,  in 
August  and  September,  as  rather  pleasant 
just  to  be  caught  for  something  or  other  in 
passing  through  town.  Somebody  was 
always  passing  and  somebody  might  catch 
somebody  else.  It  was  in  full  cognisance  of 
this  subtle  law  that  she  adhered  to  the  most 
ridiculous  circuit  she  could  have  made  to  get 
home.  One  warm,  dull,  featureless  Friday, 
when  an  accident  had  made  her  start  from 
Cocker's  a  little  later  than  usual,  she  became 
aware  that  something  of  which  the  infinite 
possibilities  had  for  so  long  peopled  her 
dreams  was  at  last  prodigiously  upon  her, 
though  the  perfection  in  which  the  condi 
tions  happened  to  present  it  was  almost 
rich  enough  to  be  but  the  positive  creation 


IN  THE  CAGE  105 

of  a  dream.  She  saw,  straight  before  her, 
like  a  vista  painted  in  a  picture,  the  empty 
street  and  the  lamps  that  burned  pale  in  the 
dusk  not  yet  established.  It  was  into  the 
convenience  of  this  quiet  twilight  that  a 
gentleman  on  the  doorstep  of  the  Chambers 
gazed  with  a  vagueness  that  our  young 
lady's  little  figure  violently  trembled,  in  the 
approach,  with  the  measure  of  its  power  to 
dissipate.  Everything  indeed  grew  in  a 
flash  terrific  and  distinct;  her  old  uncertain 
ties  fell  away  from  her,  and,  since  she  was 
so  familiar  with  fate,  she  felt  as  if  the  very 
nail  that  fixed  it  were  driven  in  by  the  hard 
look  with  which,  for  a  moment,  Captain 
Everard  awaited  her. 

The  vestibule  was  open  behind  him  and 
the  porter  as  absent  as  on  the  day  she  had 
peeped  in;  he  had  just  come  out — was  in 
town,  in  a  tweed  suit  and  a  pot  hat,  but 
between  two  journeys — duly  bored  over  his 
evening  and  at  a  loss  what  to  do  with  it. 
Then  it  was  that  she  was  glad  she  had  never 
met  him  in  that  way  before:  she  reaped 


io6  IN  THE  CAGE 

with  such  ecstacy  the  benefit  of  his  not  being 
able  to  think  she  passed  often.  She  jumped 
in  two  seconds  to  the  determination  that  he 
should  even  suppose  it  to  be  the  first  time 
and  the  queerest  chance :  this  was  while  she 
still  wondered  if  he  would  identify  or  notice 
her.  His  original  attention  had  not,  she 
instinctively  knew,  been  for  the  young 
woman  at  Cocker's;  it  had  only  been  for 
any  young  woman  who  might  advance  with 
an  air  of  not  upholding  ugliness.  Ah,  but 
then,  and  just  as  she  had  reached  the  door, 
came  his  second  observation,  a  long,  light 
reach  with  which,  visibly  and  quite 
amusedly,  he  recalled  and  placed  her.  They 
were  on  different  sides,  but  the  street,  nar 
row  and  still,  had  only  made  more  of  a  stage 
for  the  small  momentary  drama.  It  was  not 
over,  besides,  it  was  far  from  over,  even  on 
his  sending  across  the  way,  with  the  pleas- 
antest  laugh  she  had  ever  heard,  a  little  lift 
of  his  hat  and  an  'Oh,  good-evening!'  It 
was  still  less  over  on  their  meeting,  the 
next  minute,  though  rather  indirectly  and 


IN  THE  CAGE  107 

awkwardly,  in  the  middle  of  the  road — a 
situation  to  which  three  or  four  steps  of  her 
own  had  unmistakably  contributed — and 
then  passing  not  again  to  the  side  on  which 
she  had  arrived,  but  back  toward  the  portal 
of  Park  Chambers. 

4 1  didn't  know  you  at  first.  Are  you 
taking  a  walk?' 

'Oh,  I  don't  take  walks  at  night!  I'm 
going  home  after  my  work. ' 

'Oh! 

That  was  practically  what  they  had  mean 
while  smiled  out,  and  his  exclamation,  to 
which,  for  a  minute,  he  appeared  to  have 
nothing  to  add,  left  them  face  to  face  and  in 
just  such  an  attitude  as,  for  his  part,  he 
might  have  worn  had  he  been  wondering  if 
he  could  properly  ask  her  to  come  in.  Dur 
ing  this  interval,  in  fact,  she  really  felt  his 
question  to  be  just  ' How  properly — ?'  It 
was  simply  a  question  of  the  degree  of 
properness. 


XV 

She  never  knew  afterwards  quite  what  she 
had  done  to  settle  it,  and  at  the  time  she 
only  knew  that  they  presently  moved,  with 
vagueness,  but  with  continuity,  away  from 
the  picture  of  the  lighted  vestibule  and  the 
quiet  stairs  and  well  up  the  street  together. 
This  also  must  have  been  in  the  absence  of 
a  definite  permission,  of  anything  vulgarly 
articulate,  for  that  matter,  on  the  part  of 
either ;  and  it  was  to  be,  later  on,  a  thing  of 
remembrance  and  reflection  for  her  that  the 
limit  of  what,  just  here,  for  a  longish  min 
ute,  passed  between  them  was  his  taking  in 
her  thoroughly  successful  deprecation, 
though  conveyed  without  pride  or  sound  or 
touch,  of  the  idea  that  she  might  be,  out  of 
the  cage,  the  very  shopgirl  at  large  that  she 
hugged  the  theory  she  was  not.  Yes,  it  was 
strange,  she  afterwards  thought,  that  so 

much  could  have  come  and  gone  and  yet  not 
109 


no  IN  THE  CAGE 

troubled  the  air  either  with  impertinence 
or  with  resentment,  with  any  of  the  horrid 
notes  of  that  kind  of  acquaintance.  He 
had  taken  no  liberty,  as  she  would  have 
called  it ;  and,  through  not  having  to  betray 
the  sense  of  one,  she  herself  had,  still  more 
charmingly,  taken  none.  Yet  on  the  spot, 
nevertheless,  she  could  speculate  as  to  what 
it  meant  that,  if  his  relation  with  Lady 
Bradeen  continued  to  be  what  her  mind  had 
built  it  up  to,  he  should  feel  free  to  proceed 
in  any  private  direction.  This  was  one  of 
the  questions  he  was  to  leave  her  to  deal 
with — the  question  whether  people  of  his 
sort  still  asked  girls  up  to  their  rooms  when 
they  were  so  awfully  in  love  with  other 
women.  Could  people  of  his  sort  do  that  with 
out  what  people  of  her  sort  would  call  being 
'false  to  their  love'?  She  had  already  a  vision 
of  how  the  true  answer  was  that  people  of 
her  sort  didn't,  in  such  cases,  matter — didn't 
count  as  infidelity,  counted  only  as  some 
thing  else:  she  might  have  been  curious, 
since  it  came  to  that,  to  see  exactly  what. 


IN  THE  CAGE  in 

Strolling  together  slowly  in  their  summer 
twilight  and  their  empty  corner  of  Mayfair, 
they  found  themselves  emerge  at  last 
opposite  to  one  of  the  smaller  gates  of  the 
Park;  upon  which,  without  any  particular 
word  about  it — they  were  talking  so  of  other 
things — they  crossed  the  street  and  went  in 
and  sat  down  on  a  bench.  She  had  gathered 
by  this  time  one  magnificent  hope  about 
him — the  hope  that  he  would  say  nothing 
vulgar.  She  knew  what  she  meant  by  that ; 
she  meant  something  quite  apart  from  any 
matter  of  his  being  'false.'  Their  bench 
was  not  far  within;  it  was  near  the  Park 
Lane  paling  and  the  patchy  lamplight  and 
the  rumbling  cabs  and  'busses.  A  strange 
emotion  had  come  to  her,  and  she  felt 
indeed  excitement  within  excitement ;  above 
all  a  conscious  joy  in  testing  him  with 
chances  he  didn't  take.  She  had  an  intense 
desire  he  should  know  the  type  she  really 
was  without  her  doing  anything  so  low  as 
tell  him,  and  he  had  surely  begun  to  know 
it  from  the  moment  he  didn't  seize  the 


H2  IN  THE  CAGE 

opportunities  into  which  a  common  man 
would  promptly  have  blundered.  These 
were  on  the  mere  surface,  and  their  relation 
was  behind  and  below  them.  She  had 
questioned  so  little  on  the  way  what  they 
were  doing  that  as  soon  as  they  were  seated 
she  took  straight  hold  of  it.  Her  hours,  her 
confinement,  the  many  conditions  of  service 
in  the  post-office,  had — with  a  glance  at  his 
own  postal  resources  and  alternatives — 
formed,  up  to  this  stage,  the  subject  of  their 
talk.  'Well,  here  we  are,  and  it  may  be 
right  enough;  but  this  isn't  the  least,  you 
know,  where  I  was  going. ' 

'You  were  going  home?' 

'Yes,  and  I  was  already  rather  late.  I 
was  going  to  my  supper. ' 

'You  haven't  had  it?' 

'No,  indeed!' 

'Then  you  haven't  eaten ? 

He  looked,  of  a  sudden,  so  extravagantly 
concerned  that  she  laughed  out.  'All  day? 
Yes,  we  do  feed  once.  But  that  was  long 
ago.  So  I  must  presently  say  good-bye. ' 


IN  THE  CAGE  113 

'Oh,  deary  me.r  he  exclaimed,  with  an 
intonation  so  droll  and  yet  a  touch  so  light 
and  a  distress  so  marked — a  confession  of 
helplessness  for  such  a  case,  in  short,  so 
unrelieved — that  she  felt  sure,  on  the  spot, 
she  had  made  the  great  difference  plain. 
He  looked  at  her  with  the  kindest  eyes  and 
still  without  saying  what  she  had  known  he 
wouldn't.  She  had  known  he  wouldn't  say 
'Then  sup  with  me/ 'but  the  proof  of  it  made 
her  feel  as  if  she  had  feasted. 

'I'm  not  a  bit  hungry,'  she  went  on. 

'Ah,  you  must  be,  awfully!'  he  made 
answer,  but  settling  himself  on  the  bench  as 
if,  after  all,  that  needn't  interfere  with  his 
spending  his  evening.  'I've  always  quite 
wanted  the  chance  to  thank  you  for  the 
trouble  you  so  often  take  for  me. ' 

'Yes,  I  know,'  she  replied;  uttering  the 
words  with  a  sense  of  the  situation  far 
deeper  than  any  pretence  of  not  fitting  his 
allusion.  She  immediately  saw  that  he  was 
surprised  and  even  a  little  puzzled  at  her 
frank  assent;  but,  for  herself,  the  trouble 


H4  IN  THE  CAGE 

she  had  taken  could  only,  in  these  fleeting 
minutes — they  would  probably  never  come 
back — be  all  there  like  a  little  hoard  of  gold 
in  her  lap.  Certainly  he  might  look  at  it, 
handle  it,  take  up  the  pieces.  Yet  if  he 
understood  anything  he  must  understand  all. 
'I  consider  you've  already  immensely 
thanked  me.'  The  horror  was  back  upon 
her  of  having  seemed  to  hang  about  for  some 
reward.  'It's  awfully  odd  that  you  should 
have  been  there  just  the  one  time !' 

'The  one  time  you've  passed  my  place?' 

'Yes;  you  can  fancy  I  haven't  many  min 
utes  to  waste.  There  was  a  place  to-night  I 
had  to  stop  at. ' 

'I  see,  I  see" — he  knew  already  so  much 
about  her  work.  'It must  bean  awful  grind 
— for  a  lady. ' 

'It  is;  but  I  don't  think  I  groan  over  it  any 
more  than  my  companions — and  you've  seen 
they're  not  ladies!'  She  mildly  jested,  but 
with  an  intention.  'One  gets  used  to 
things,  and  there  are  employments  I  should 
have  hated  much  more.'  She  had  the  finest 


IN  THE  CAGE  115 

conception  of  the  beauty  of  not,  at  least, 
boring  him.  To  whine,  to  count  up  her 
wrongs,  was  what  a  barmaid  or  a  shopgirl 
would  do,  and  it  was  quite  enough  to  sit 
there  like  one  of  these. 

'  If  you  had  had  another  employment, '  he 
remarked  after  a  moment,  'we  might  never 
have  become  acquainted. ' 

'It's  highly  probable — and  certainly  not 
in  the  same  way. '  Then,  still  with  her  heap 
of  gold  in  her  lap  and  something  of  the  pride 
of  it  in  her  manner  of  holding  her  head,  she 
continued  not  to  move — she  only  smiled  at 
him.  The  evening  had  thickened  now ;  the 
scattered  lamps  were  red;  the  Park,  all 
before  them,  was  full  of  obscure  and  ambig 
uous  life ;  there  were  other  couples  on  other 
benches,  whom  it  was  impossible  not  to  see, 
yet  at  whom  it  was  impossible  to  look.  'But 
I've  walked  so  much  out  of  my  way  with  you 
only  just  to  show  you  that — that' — with  this 
she  paused ;  it  was  not,  after  all,  so  easy  to 
express — 'that  anything  you  may  have 
thought  is  perfectly  true. ' 


u6  IN  THE  CAGE 

4 Oh,  I've  thought  a  tremendous  lot!'  her 
companion  laughed.  'Do  you  mind  my 
smoking?' 

'Why  should  I?     You  always  smoke  there.' 

'At  your  place?  Oh,  yes,  but  here*  it's 
different. ' 

'No,'  she  said,  as  he  lighted  a  cigarette, 
'that's  just  what  it  isn't.  It's  quite  the  same. ' 

'Well,  then,  that's  because  "there"  it's  so 
wonderful!' 

'Then  you're  conscious  of  how  wonderful 
it  is?'  she  returned. 

He  jerked  his  handsome  head  in  literal 
protest  at  a  doubt.  'Why,  that's  exactly 
what  I  mean  by  my  gratitude  for  all  your 
trouble.  It  has  been  just  as  if  you  took  a 
particular  interest.'  She  only  looked  at  him 
in  answer  to  this,  in  such  sudden,  immediate 
embarrassment,  as  she  was  quite  aware, 
that,  while  she  remained  silent,  he  showed 
he  was  at  a  loss  to  interpret  her  expression. 
'You  have — haven't  you? — taken  a  particular 
interest?' 

'Oh,  a  particular  interest!'  she  quavered 


IN  THE  CAGE  117 

out,  feeling  the  whole  thing — her  immediate 
embarrassment — get  terribly  the  better  of 
her,  and  wishing,  with  a  sudden  scare,  all 
the  more  to  keep  her  emotion  down.  She 
maintained  her  fixed  smile  a  moment  and 
turned  her  eyes  over  the  peopled  darkness, 
unconfused  now,  because  there  was  some 
thing  much  more  confusing.  This,  with  a 
fatal  great  rush,  was  simply  the  fact  that 
they  were  thus  together.  They  were  near, 
near,  and  all  that  she  had  imagined  of  that 
had  only  become  more  true,  more  dreadful 
and  overwhelming.  She  stared  straight 
away  in  silence  till  she  felt  that  she  looked 
like  an  idiot;  then,  to  say  something,  to  say 
nothing,  she  attempted  a  sound  which  ended 
in  a  flood  of  tears, 


XVI 

Her  tears  helped  her  really  to  dissimulate, 
for  she  had  instantly,  in  so  public  a  situa 
tion,  to  recover  herself.  They  had  come 
and  gone  in  half  a  minute,  and  she  imme 
diately  explained  them.  'It's  only  because 
I'm  tired.  It's  that— it's  that!'  Then  she 
added  a  trifle  incoherently:  'I  shall  never 
see  you  again. ' 

'Ah,  but  why  not?'  The  mere  tone  in 
which  her  companion  asked  this  satisfied 
her  once  for  all  as  to  the  amount  of  imagi 
nation  for  which  she  could  count  on  him.  It 
was  naturally  not  large:  it  had  exhausted 
itself  in  having  arrived  at  what  he  had 
already  touched  upon — the  sense  of  an 
intention  in  her  poor  zeal  at  Cocker's.  But 
any  deficiency  of  this  kind  was  no  fault  in 
him ;  he  wasn't  obliged  to  have  an  inferior 
cleverness — to  have  second-rate  resources 

and  virtues.     It  had  been  as  if  he  almost 
119 


120  IN  THE  CAGE 

really  believed  she  had  simply  cried  for 
fatigue,  and  he  had  accordingly  put  in  some 
kind,  confused  plea — 'You  ought  really  to 
take  something:  won't  you  have  something 
or  other  somezvhere?' — to  which  she  had 
made  no  response  but  a  headshake  of  a 
sharpness  that  settled  it.  'Why  shan't  we 
all  the  more  keep  meeting?' 

'I  mean  meeting  this  way — only  this  way. 
At  my  place  there — that  I've  nothing  to  do 
with,  and  I  hope  of  course  you'll  turn  up, 
with  your  correspondence,  when  it  suits 
you.  Whether  I  stay  or  not,  I  mean ;  for  I 
shall  probably  not  stay. ' 

'You're  going  somewhere  else?' — he  put  it 
with  positive  anxiety. 

'Yes;  ever  so  far  away — to  the  other  end 
of  London.  There  are  all  sorts  of  reasons 
I  can't  tell  you;  and  it's  practically  settled. 
It's  better  for  me,  much;  and  I've  only 
kept  on  at  Cocker's  for  you.' 

'For  me?' 

Making  out  in  the  dusk  that  he  fairly 
blushed,  she  now  measured  how  far  he  had 


IN  THE  CAGE  121 

been  from  knowing  too  much.  Too  much, 
she  called  it  at  present ;  and  that  was  easy, 
since  it  proved  so  abundantly  enough  for 
her  that  he  should  simply  be  where  he  was. 
'As  we  shall  never  talk  this  way  but  to-night 
— never,  never  again! — here  it  all  is;  I'll  say 
it;  I  don't  care  what  you  think;  it  doesn't 
matter ;  I  only  want  to  help  you.  Besides, 
you're  kind — you're  kind.  I've  been  think 
ing,  then,  of  leaving  for  ever  so  long.  But 
you've  come  so  often — at  times — and  you've 
had  so  much  to  do,  and  it  has  been  so  pleas 
ant  and  interesting,  that  I've  remained,  I've 
kept  putting  off  any  change.  More  than 
once,  when  I  had  nearly  decided,  you've 
turned  up  again  and  I've  thought,  "Oh,  no!" 
That's  the  simple  fact!'  She  had  by  this 
time  got  her  confusion  down  so  completely 
that  she  could  laugh.  'This  is  what  I  meant 
when  I  said  to  you  just  now  that  I  "knew." 
I've  known  perfectly  that  you  knew  I  took 
trouble  for  you;  and  that  knowledge  has 
been  for  me,  and  I  seemed  to  see  it  was  for 
you,  as  if  there  were  something — I  don't 


122  IN  THE  CAGE 

know  what  to  call  it! — between  us.  I  mean 
something  unusual  and  good — something  not 
a  bit  horrid  or  vulgar. ' 

She  had  by  this  time,  she  could  see,  pro 
duced  a  great  effect  upon  him;  but  she 
would  have  spoken  the  truth  to  herself  if  she 
had  at  the  same  moment  declared  that  she 
didn't  in  the  least  care:  all  the  more  that 
the  effect  must  be  one  of  extreme  perplexity. 
What,  in  it  all,  was  visibly  clear  for  him, 
none  the  less,  was  that  he  was  tremendously 
glad  he  had  met  her.  She  held  him,  and  he 
was  astonished  at  the  force  of  it;  he  was 
intent,  immensely  considerate.  His  elbow 
was  on  the  back  of  the  seat,  and  his  head, 
with  the  pot-hat  pushed  quite  back,  in  a 
boyish  way,  so  that  she  really  saw  almost  for 
the  first  time  his  forehead  and  hair,  rested 
on  the  hand  into  which  he  had  crumpled  his 
gloves.  'Yes,'  he  assented,  'it's  not  a  bit 
horrid  or  vulgar. ' 

She  just  hung  fire  a  moment;  then  she 
brought  out  the  whole  truth.  'I'd  do  any 
thing  for  you.  I'd  do  anything  for  you.' 


IN  THE  CAGE  123 

Never  in  her  life  had  she  known  anything  so 
high  and  fine  as  this,  just  letting  him  have 
it  and  bravely  and  magnificently  leaving  it. 
Didn't  the  place,  the  associations  and  cir 
cumstances,  perfectly  make  it  sound  what  it 
was  not ;  and  wasn't  that  exactly  the  beauty? 
So  she  bravely  and  magnificently  left  it, 
and  little  by  little  she  felt  him  take  it  up, 
take  it  down,  as  if  they  had  been  on  a  satin 
sofa  in  a  boudoir.  She  had  never  seen  a 
boudoir,  but  there  had  been  lots  of  boudoirs 
in  the  telegrams.  What  she  had  said,  at  all 
events,  sank  into  him,  so  that  after  a  minute 
he  simply  made  a  movement  that  had  the 
result  of  placing  his  hand  on  her  own — 
presently  indeed  that  of  her  feeling  her 
self  firmly  enough  grasped.  There  was  no 
pressure  she  need  return,  there  was  none 
she  need  decline;  she  just  sat  admirably 
still,  satisfied,  for  the  time,  with  the  sur 
prise  and  bewilderment  of  the  impression 
she  made  on  him.  His  agitation  was  even 
greater,  on  the  whole,  than  she  had  at 
first  allowed  for.  'I  say,  you  know,  you 


124  IN  THE  CAGE 

mustn't  think  of  leaving!'  he  at  last  broke 
out. 

'Of  leaving  Cocker's,  you  mean?' 

'Yes,  you  must  stay  on  there,  whatever 
happens,  and  help  a  fellow.' 

She  was  silent  a  little,  partly  because  it 
was  so  strange  and  exquisite  to  feel  him 
watch  her  as  if  it  really  mattered  to  him 
and  he  were  almost  in  suspense.  'Then  you 
have  quite  recognised  what  I've  tried  to 
do?'  she  asked. 

'Why,  wasn't  that  exactly  what  I  dashed 
over  from  my  door  just  now  to  thank  you  for?' 

'Yes;  so  you  said.' 

'And  don't  you  believe  it?' 

She  looked  down  a  moment  at  his  hand, 
which  continued  to  cover  her  own ;  where 
upon  he  presently  drew  it  back,  rather  rest 
lessly  folding  his  arms.  Without  answering 
his  question  she  went  on:  'Have  you  ever 
spoken  of  me?' 

'Spoken  of  you?' 

'Of  my  being  there — of  my  knowing,  and 
that  sort  of  thing. ' 


IN  THE  CAGE  125 

'Oh,  never  to  a  human  creature!'  he 
eagerly  declared. 

She  had  a  small  drop  at  this,  which  was 
expressed  in  another  pause ;  after  which  she 
returned  to  what  he  had  just  asked  her. 
'Oh,  yes,  I  quite  believe  you  like  it — my 
always  being  there  and  our  taking  things  up 
so  familiarly  and  successfully :  if  not  exactly 
where  we  left  them,'  she  laughed,  'almost 
always,  at  least,  in  an  interesting  place!' 
He  was  about  to  say  something  in  reply  to 
this,  but  her  friendly  gaiety  was  quicker. 
'You  want  a  great  many  things  in  life,  a 
great  many  comforts  and  helps  and  luxuries 
— you  want  everything  as  pleasant  as  pos 
sible.  Therefore,  so  far  as  it's  in  the  power 
of  any  particular  person  to  contribute  to  all 

that '  She  had  turned  her  face  to  him 

smiling,  just  thinking. 

'Oh,  see  here!'  But  he  was  highly 
amused.  'Well,  what  then?'  he  inquired, 
as  if  to  humour  her. 

'Why,  the  particular  person  must  never 
fail.  We  must  manage  it  for  you  somehow. ' 


i26  IN  THE  CAGE 

He  threw  back  his  head,  laughing  out; 
he  was  really  exhilarated.  'Oh,  yes,  some 
how!' 

'Well,  I  think  we  each  do — don't  we? — in 
one  little  way  and  another  and  according  to 
our  limited  lights.  I'm  pleased,  at  any 
rate,  for  myself,  that  you  are;  for  I  assure 
you  I've  done  my  best.' 

'You  do  better  than  any  one!'  He  had 
struck  a  match  for  another  cigarette,  and 
the  flame  lighted  an  instant  his  responsive, 
finished  face,  magnifying  into  a  pleasant 
grimace  the  kindness  with  which  he  paid  her 
this  tribute.  'You're  awfully  clever,  you 

know;  cleverer,  cleverer,  cleverer !' 

He  had  appeared  on  the  point  of  making 
some  tremendous  statement ;  then  suddenly, 
puffing  his  cigarette  and  shifting  almost 
with  violence  on  his  seat,  let  it  altogether 
fall. 


XVII 

In  spite  of  this  drop,  if  not  just  by  reason 
of  it,  she  felt  as  if  Lady  Bradeen,  all  but 
named  out,  had  popped  straight  up ;  and  she 
practically  betrayed  her  consciousness  by 
waiting  a  little  before  she  rejoined:  'Clev 
erer  than  who?' 

'Well,  if  I  wasn't  afraid  you'd  think  I 
swagger,  I  should  say — than  anybody!  If 
you  leave  your  place  there,  where  shall  you 
go?'  he  more  gravely  demanded. 

'Oh,  too  far  for  you  ever  to  find  me!' 

'I'd  find  you  anywhere.' 

The  tone  of  this  was  so  still  more  serious 
that  she  had  but  her  one  acknowledgment. 
'I'd  do  anything  for  you — I'd  do  anything 
for  you,'  she  repeated.  She  had  already, 
she  felt,  said  it  all;  so  what  did  anything 
more,  anything  less,  matter?  That  was  the 
very  reason  indeed  why  she  could,  with  a 
lighter  note,  ease  him  generously  of  any 


128  IN  THE  CAGE 

awkwardness  produced  by  solemnity,  either 
his  own  or  hers.  'Of  course  it  must  be  nice 
for  you  to  be  able  to  think  there  are  people 
all  about  who  feel  in  such  a  way. ' 

In  immediate  appreciation  of  this,  how 
ever,  he  only  smoked  without  looking  at  her. 
'But  you  don't  want  to  give  up  your  present 
work?'  he  at  last  inquired.  'I  mean  you 
will  stay  in  the  post-office?' 

'Oh,  yes;  I  think  I've  a  genius  for  that.' 

'  Rather !  No  one  can  touch  you. '  With 
this  he  turned  more  to  her  again.  'But  you 
can  get,  with  a  move,  greater  advantages?' 

'I  can  get,  in  the  suburbs,  cheaper  lodg 
ings.  I  will  live  with  my  mother.  We  need 
some  space;  and  there's  a  particular  place 
that  has  other  inducements. ' 

He  just  hesitated.     'Where  is  it?' 

'Oh,  quite  out  of  your  way.  You'd  never 
have  time. ' 

'But  I  tell  you  I'd  go  anywhere.  Don't 
you  believe  it?' 

'Yes,  for  once  or  twice.  But  you'd  soon 
see  it  wouldn't  do  for  you.' 


IN  THE  CAGE  129 

He  smoked  and  considered;  seemed  to 
stretch  himself  a  little  and,  with  his  legs  out, 
surrender  himself  comfortably.  'Well,  well, 
well — I  believe  everything  you  say.  I  take 
it  from  you — anything  you  like — in  the  most 
extraordinary  way.'  It  struck  her  certainly 
— and  almost  without  bitterness — that  the 
way  in  which  she  was  already,  as  if  she  had 
been  an  old  friend,  arranging  for  him  and 
preparing  the  only  magnificence  she  could 
muster,  was  quite  the  most  extraordinary. 
'Don't,  don't  go!'  he  presently  went  on.  'I 
shall  miss  you  too  horribly ! ' 

'So  that  you  just  put  it  to  me  as  a  definite 
request?' — oh,  how  she  tried  to  divest  this 
of  all  sound  of  the  hardness  of  bargaining! 
That  ought  to  have  been  easy  enough,  for 
what  was  she  arranging  to  get?  Before  he 
could  answer  she  had  continued:  'To  be 
perfectly  fair,  I  should  tell  you  I  recognise 
at  Cocker's  certain  strong  attractions.  All 
you  people  come.  I  like  all  the  horrors. ' 

'The  horrors?' 

'Those  you  all — you  know  the  set  I  mean, 


130  IN  THE  CAGE 

your  set — show  me  with  as  good  a  conscience 
as  if  I  had  no  more  feeling  than  a  letter 
box.' 

He  looked  quite  excited  at  the  way  she 
put  it.  'Oh,  they  don't  know!' 

'Don't  know  I'm  not  stupid?  No,  how 
should  they?' 

'Yes,  how  should  they?'  said  the  Captain 
sympathetically.  'But  isn't  "horrors" 
rather  strong?' 

'What  you  do  is  rather  strong!'  the  girl 
promptly  returned. 

'What /do?' 

'Your  extravagance,  your  selfishness,  your 
immorality,  your  crimes, '  she  pursued,  with 
out  heeding  his  expression. 

'I  say!' — her  companion  showed  the 
queerest  stare. 

'I  like  them,  as  I  tell  you — I  revel  in 
them.  But  we  needn't  go  into  that,'  she 
quietly  went  on;  'for  all  I  get  out  of  it  is  the 
harmless  pleasure  of  knowing.  I  know,  I 
know,  I  know!' — she  breathed  it  ever  so 
gently. 


IN  THE  CAGE  131 

Yes;  that's  what  has  been  between  us,' 
he  answered  much  more  simply. 

She  could  enjoy  his  simplicity  in  silence, 
and  for  a  moment  she  did  so.  'If  I  do  stay 
because  you  want  it — and  I'm  rather  capable 
of  that — there  are  two  or  three  things  I 
think  you  ought  to  remember.  One  is,  you 
know,  that  I'm  there  sometimes  for  days  and 
weeks  together  without  your  ever  coming. ' 

'Oh,  I'll  come  everyday!'  he  exclaimed. 

She  was  on  the  point,  at  this,  of  imitating 
with  her  hand  his  movement  of  shortly 
before;  but  she  checked  herself,  and  there 
was  no  want  of  effect  in  the  tranquillising 
way  in  which  she  said:  'How  can  you? 
How  can  you?1  He  had,  too  manifestly, 
only  to  look  at  it  there,  in  the  vulgarly  ani 
mated  gloom,  to  see  that  he  couldn't;  and  at 
this  point,  by  the  mere  action  of  his  silence, 
everything  they  had  so  definitely  not  named, 
the  whole  presence  round  which  they  had 
been  circling  became  a  part  of  their  refer 
ence,  settled  solidly  between  them.  It  was 
as  if  then,  for  a  minute,  they  sat  and  saw  it 


i32  IN  THE  CAGE 

all  in  each  other's  eyes,  saw  so  much  that 
there  was  no  need  of  a  transition  for  sound 
ing  it  at  last.  'Your  danger,  your  danger — 
— !'  Her  voice  indeed  trembled  with  it,  and 
she  could  only,  for  the  moment,  again  leave 
it  so. 

During  this  moment  he  leaned  back  on 
the  bench,  meeting  her  in  silence  and  with 
a  face  that  grew  more  strange.  It  grew  so 
strange  that,  after  a  further  instant,  she 
got  straight  up.  She  stood  there  as  if  their 
talk  were  now  over,  and  he  just  sat  and 
watched  her.  It  was  as  if  now — owing  to 
the  third  person  they  had  brought  in — they 
must  be  more  careful ;  so  that  the  most  he 
could  finally  say  was:  'That's  where  it  is!' 

'That's  where  it  is!'  the  girl  as  guardedly 
replied.  He  sat  still,  and  she  added:  'I 
won't  abandon  you.  Good-bye.' 

'Good-bye?' — he  appealed,  but  without 
moving. 

'I  don't  quite  see  my  way,  but  I  won't 
abandon  you, '  she  repeated.  'There.  Good 
bye.' 


IN  THE  CAGE  133 

It  brought  him  with  a  jerk  to  his  feet, 
tossing  away  his  cigarette.  His  poor  face 
was  flushed.  'See  here — see  here!' 

'No,  I  won't;  but  I  must  leave  you  now,' 
she  went  on  as  if  not  hearing  him. 

'See  here — see  here!'  He  tried,  from  the 
bench,  to  take  her  hand  again. 

But  that  definitely  settled  it  for  her :  this 
would,  after  all,  be  as  bad  as  his  asking  her 
to  supper.  'You  mustn't  come  with  me — 
no,  no!' 

He  sank  back,  quite  blank,  as  if  she  had 
pushed  him.  'I  mayn't  see  you  home?' 

'No,  no;  let  me  go.'  He  looked  almost  as 
if  she  had  struck  him,  but  she  didn't  care; 
and  the  manner  in  which  she  spoke — it  was 
literally  as  if  she  were  angry — had  the  force 
of  a  command.  '  Stay  where  you  are ! ' 

'See  here — see  here!'  he  nevertheless 
pleaded. 

'I  won't  abandon  you!'  she  cried  once 
more — this  time  quite  with  passion;  on 
which  she  got  away  from  him  as  fast  as  she 
could  and  left  him  staring  after  her. 


XVIII 

Mr.  Mudge  had  lately  been  so  occupied 
with  their  famous  'plans'  that  he  had 
neglected,  for  a  while,  the  question  of  her 
transfer;  but  down  at  Bournemouth,  which 
had  found  itself  selected  as  the  field  of  their 
recreation  by  a  process  consisting,  it  seemed, 
exclusively  of  innumerable  pages  of  the 
neatest  arithmetic  in  a  very  greasy,  but  most 
orderly  little  pocket-book,  the  distracting 
possible  melted  away — the  fleeting  irremedi 
able  ruled  the  scene.  The  plans,  hour  by 
hour,  were  simply  superseded,  and  it  was 
much  of  a  rest  to  the  girl,  as  she  sat  on  the 
pier  and  overlooked  the  sea  and  the  com 
pany,  to  see  them  evaporate  in  rosy  fumes 
and  to  feel  that  from  moment  to  moment 
there  was  less  left  to  cipher  about.  The 
week  proved  blissfully  fine,  and  her  mother, 
at  their  lodgings — partly  to  her  embarrass 
ment  and  partly  to  her  relief — struck  up 
135 


136  IN  THE  CAGE 

with  the  landlady  an  alliance  that  left  the 
younger  couple  a  great  deal  of  freedom. 
This  relative  took  her  pleasure  of  a  week  at 
Bournemouth  in  a  stuffy  back-kitchen  and 
endless  talks;  to  that  degree  even  that  Mr. 
Mudge  himself — habitually  inclined  indeed 
to  a  scrutiny  of  all  mysteries  and  to  seeing, 
as  he  sometimes  admitted,  too  much  in 
things — made  remarks  on  it  as  he  sat  on  the 
cliff  with  his  betrothed,  or  on  the  decks  of 
steamers  that  conveyed  them,  close-packed 
items  in  terrific  totals  of  enjoyment,  to  the 
Isle  of  Wight  and  the  Dorset  coast. 

He  had  a  lodging  in  another  house,  where 
he  had  speedily  learned  the  importance  of 
keeping  his  eyes  open,  and  he  made  no 
secret  of  his  suspecting  that  sinister  mutual 
connivances  might  spring,  under  the  roof  of 
his  companions,  from  unnatural  sociabilities. 
At  the  same  time  he  fully  recognised  that, 
as  a  source  of  anxiety,  not  to  say  of  expense, 
his  future  mother-in-law  would  have 
weighted  them  more  in  accompanying  their 
steps  than  in  giving  her  hostess,  in  the 


IN  THE  CAGE  137 

interest  of  the  tendency  they  considered 
that  they  never  mentioned,  equivalent 
pledges  as  to  the  tea-caddy  and  the  jam-pot. 
These  were  the  questions — these  indeed  the 
familiar  commodities — that  he  had  now  to 
put  into  the  scales ;  and  his  betrothed  had, 
in  consequence,  during  her  holiday,  the  odd, 
and  yet  pleasant  and  almost  languid,  sense 
of  an  anticlimax.  She  had  become  con 
scious  of  an  extraordinary  collapse,  a  sur 
render  to  stillness  and  to  retrospect.  She 
cared  neither  to  walk  nor  to  sail;  it  was 
enough  for  her  to  sit  on  benches  and  wonder 
at  the  sea  and  taste  the  air  and  not  be  at 
Cocker's  and  not  see  the  counter-clerk. 
She  still  seemed  to  wait  for  something — 
something  in  the  key  of  the  immense  discus 
sions  that  had  mapped  out  their  little  week 
of  idleness  on  the  scale  of  a  world-atlas. 
Something  came  at  last,  but  without  perhaps 
appearing  quite  adequately  to  crown  the 
monument. 

Preparation  and  precaution  were,  however, 
the  natural  flowers  of  Mr.    Mudge's  mind, 


138  IN  THE  CAGE 

and  in  proportion  as  these  things  declined 
in  one  quarter  they  inevitably  bloomed  else 
where.  He  could  always,  at  the  worst,  have 
on  Tuesday  the  project  of  their  taking  the 
Swanage  boat  on  Thursday,  and  on  Thurs 
day  that  of  their  ordering  minced  kidneys  on 
Saturday.  He  had,  moreover,  a  constant 
gift  of  inexorable  inquiry  as  to  where  and 
what  they  should  have  gone  and  have  done 
if  they  had  not  been  exactly  as  they  were. 
He  had  in  short  his  resources,  and  his  mis 
tress  had  never  been  so  conscious  of  them ; 
on  the  other  hand  they  had  never  interfered 
so  little  with  her  own.  She  liked  to  be  as 
she  was — if  it  could  only  have  lasted.  She 
could  accept  even  without  bitterness  a  rigour 
of  economy  so  great  that  the  little  fee  they 
paid  for  admission  to  the  pier  had  to  be  bal 
anced  against  other  delights.  The  people 
at  Ladle's  and  atThrupp's  had  their  ways  of 
amusing  themselves,  whereas  she  had  to  sit 
and  hear  Mr.  Mudge  talk  of  what  he  might 
do  if  he  didn't  take  a  bath,  or  of  the  bath  he 
might  take  if  he  only  hadn't  taken  something 


IN  THE  CAGE  139 

else.  He  was  always  with  her  now,  of 
course,  always  beside  her;  she  saw  him 
more  than  'hourly,'  more  than  ever  yet, 
more  even  than  he  had  planned  she  should 
do  at  Chalk  Farm.  She  preferred  to  sit  at 
the  far  end,  away  from  the  band  and  the 
crowd ;  as  to  which  she  had  frequent  differ 
ences  with  her  friend,  who  reminded  her 
often  that  they  could  have  only  in  the  thick 
of  it  the  sense  of  the  money  they  were  get 
ting  back.  That  had  little  effect  on  her,  for 
she  got  back  her  money  by  seeing  many 
things,  the  things  of  the  past  year,  fall 
together  and  connect  themselves,  undergo 
the  happy  relegation  that  transforms  melan 
choly  and  misery,  passion  and  effort,  into 
experience  and  knowledge. 

She  liked  having  done  with  them,  as  she 
assured  herself  she  had  practically  done, 
and  the  strange  thing  was  that  she  neither 
missed  the  procession  now  nor  wished  to 
keep  her  place  for  it.  It  had  become  there, 
in  the  sun  and  the  breeze  and  the  sea-smell, 
a  far-away  story,  a  picture  of  another  life. 


140  IN  THE  CAGE 

If  Mr.  Mudge  himself  liked  processions, 
liked  them  at  Bournemouth  and  on  the  pier 
quite  as  much  as  at  Chalk  Farm  or  any 
where,  she  learned  after  a  little  not  to  be 
worried  by  his  perpetual  counting  of  the  fig 
ures  that  made  them  up.  There  were 
dreadful  women  in  particular,  usually  fat 
and  in  men's  caps  and  white  shoes,  whom 
he  could  never  let  alone — not  that  she 
cared ;  it  was  not  the  great  world,  the  world 
of  Cocker's  and  Ladle's  and  Thrupp's,  but 
it  offered  an  endless  field  to  his  faculties  of 
memory,  philosophy  and  frolic.  She  had 
never  accepted  him  so  much,  never  arranged 
so  successfully  for  making  him  chatter  while 
she  carried  on  secret  conversations.  Her 
talks  were  with  herself,  and  if  they  both 
practised  a  great  thrift  she  had  quite  mas 
tered  that  of  merely  spending  words  enough 
to  keep  him  imperturbably  and  continuously 
going. 

He  was  charmed  with  the  panorama,  not 
knowing — or  at  any  rate  not  at  all  showing 
that  he  knew — what  far  other  images  peopled 


IN  THE  CAGE  141 

her  mind  than  the  women  in  the  navy  caps 
and  the  shopboys  in  the  blazers.  His 
observations  on  these  types,  his  general 
interpretation  of  the  show,  brought  home  to 
her  the  prospect  of  Chalk  Farm.  She  won 
dered  sometimes  that  he  should  have  derived 
so  little  illumination,  during  his  period,  from 
the  society  at  Cocker's.  But  one  evening, 
as  their  holiday  cloudlessly  waned,  he  gave 
her  such  a  proof  of  his  quality  as  might 
have  made  her  ashamed  of  her  small 
reserves.  He  brought  out  something  that, 
in  all  his  overflow,  he  had  been  able  to  keep 
back  till  other  matters  were  disposed  of.  It 
was  the  announcement  that  he  was  at  last 
ready  to  marry — that  he  saw  his  way.  A 
rise  at  Chalk  Farm  had  been  offered  him ;  he 
was  to  be  taken  into  the  business,  bringing 
with  him  a  capital  the  estimation  of  which 
by  other  parties  constituted  the  handsomest 
recognition  yet  made  of  the  head  on  his 
shoulders.  Therefore  their  waiting  was 
over — it  could  be  a  question  of  a  near  date. 
They  would  settle  this  date  before  going 


142  IN  THE  CAGE 

back,  and  he  meanwhile  had  his  eye  on  a 
sweet  little  home.  He  would  take  her  to 
see  it  on  their  first  Sunday. 


XIX 

His  having  kept  this  great  news  for  the 
last,  having  had  such  a  card  up  his  sleeve 
and  not  floated  it  out  in  the  current  of  his 
chatter  and  the  luxury  of  their  leisure,  was 
one  of  those  incalculable  strokes  by  which 
he  could  still  affect  her ;  the  kind  of  thing 
that  reminded  her  of  the  latent  force  that 
had  ejected  the  drunken  soldier — an  exam 
ple  of  the  profundity  of  which  his  promotion 
was  the  proof.  She  listened  awhile  in  si 
lence,  on  this  occasion,  to  the  wafted  strains 
of  the  music ;  she  took  it  in  as  she  had  not 
quite  done  before  that  her  future  was  now 
constituted.  Mr.  Mudge  was  distinctly  her 
fate ;  yet  at  this  moment  she  turned  her  face 
quite  away  from  him,  showing  him  so  long 
a  mere  quarter  of  her  cheek  that  she  at  last 
again  heard  his  voice.  He  couldn't  see  a 
pair  of  tears  that  were  partly  the  reason  of 

her   delay    to   give   him   the    assurance   he 
143 


144  IN  THE  CAGE 

required ;  "but  he  expressed  at  a  venture  the 
hope  that  she  had  had  her  fill  of  Cocker's. 

She  was  finally  able  to  turn  back.  'Oh, 
quite.  There's  nothing  going  on.  No  one 
comes  but  the  Americans  at  Thrupp's,  and 
they  don't  do  much.  They  don't  seem  to 
have  a  secret  in  the  world. ' 

'Then  the  extraordinary  reason  you've 
been  giving  me  for  holding  on  there  has 
ceased  to  work?' 

She  thought  a  moment.  'Yes,  that  one. 
I've  seen  the  thing  through — I've  got  them 
all  in  my  pocket. ' 

'So  you're  ready  to  come?' 

For  a  little,  again,  she  made  no  answer. 
'No,  not  yet,  all  the  same.  I've  still  got  a 
reason — a  different  one. ' 

He  looked  her  all  over  as  if  it  might  have 
been  something  she  kept  in  her  mouth  or 
her  glove  or  under  her  jacket — something 
she  was  even  sitting  upon.  'Well,  I'll  have 
it,  please.' 

'I  went  out  the  other  night  and  sat  in  the 
Park  with  a  gentleman, '  she  said  at  last. 


IN  THE  CAGE  145 

Nothing  was  ever  seen  like  his  confidence 
in  her;  and  she  wondered  a  little  now  why 
it  didn't  irritate  her.  It  only  gave  her  ease 
and  space,  as  she  felt,  for  telling  him  the 
whole  truth  that  no  one  knew.  It  had 
arrived  at  present  at  her  really  wanting  to 
do  that,  and  yet  to  do  it  not  in  the  least  for 
Mr.  Mudge,  but  altogether  and  only  for  her 
self.  This  truth  filled  out  for  her  there  the 
whole  experience  she  was  about  to  relinquish, 
suffused  and  coloured  it  as  a  picture  that  she 
should  keep  and  that,  describe  it  as  she 
might,  no  one  but  herself  would  ever  really 
see.  Moreover  she  had  no  desire  whatever 
to  make  Mr.  Mudge  jealous;  there  would  be 
no  amusement  in  it,  for  the  amusement  she 
had  lately  known  had  spoiled  her  for  lower 
pleasures.  There  were  even  no  materials  for 
it.  The  odd  thing  was  that  she  never 
doubted  that,  properly  handled,  his  passion 
was  poisonable;  what  had  happened  was 
that  he  had  calmly  selected  a  partner  with 
no  poison  to  distil.  She  read  then  and  there 
that  she  should  never  interest  herself  in 


146  IN  THE  CAGE 

anybody  as  to  whom  some  other  sentiment, 
some  superior  view,  wouldn't  be  sure  to 
interfere,  for  him,  with  jealousy.  'And 
what  did  you  get  out  of  that?'  he  asked  with 
a  concern  that  was  not  in  the  least  for  his 
honour. 

'Nothing  but  a  good  chance  to  promise 
him  I  wouldn't  forsake  him.  He's  one  of 
my  customers.' 

'Then  it's  for  him  not  to  forsake  you. ' 

'Well,  he  won't.  It's  all  right.  But  I 
must  just  keep  on  as  long  as  he  may  want 
me.' 

'Want  you  to  sit  with  him  in  the  Park?' 

'He  may  want  me  for  that — but  I  shan't. 
I  rather  like  it,  but  once,  under  the  circum 
stances,  is  enough.  I  can  do  better  for  him 
in  another  manner. ' 

'And  what  manner,  pray?' 

'Well,  elsewhere.' 

'  Elsewhere ! — I  say! ' 

This  was  an  ejaculation  used  also  by  Cap 
tain  Everard,  but,  oh,  with  what  a  different 
sound!  'You  needn't  "say" — there's  noth- 


IN  THE  CAGE  147 

ing  to  be  said.  And  yet  you  ought  perhaps 
to  know. ' 

'Certainly  I  ought.  But  what — up  to 
now?' 

'Why,  exactly  what  I  told  him.  That  I 
would  do  anything  for  him. ' 

'What  do  you  mean  by  "anything"?' 

'Everything.' 

Mr.  Mudge's  immediate  comment  on  this 
statement  was  to  draw  from  his  pocket  a 
crumpled  paper  containing  the  remains  of 
half  a  pound  of  'sundries.'  These  sundries 
had  figured  conspicuously  in  his  prospective 
sketch  of  their  tour,  but  it  was  only  at  the 
end  of  three  days  that  they  had  defined 
themselves  unmistakably  as  chocolate- 
creams.  '  Have  another? — that  one, '  he  said. 
She  had  another,  but  not  the  one  he  indi 
cated,  and  then  he  continued:  'What  took 
place  afterwards?' 

'Afterwards?' 

'What  did  you  do  when  you  had  told  him 
you  would  do  everything?' 

'I  simply  came  away.' 


148  IN  THE  CAGE 

'Out  of  the  Park?' 

'Yes,  leaving  him  there.  I  didn't  let  him 
follow  me. ' 

'Then  what  did  you  let  him  do?' 

'I  didn't  let  him  do  anything.' 

Mr.  Mudge  considered  an  instant.  'Then 
what  did  you  go  there  for?'  His  tone  was 
even  slightly  critical. 

'I  didn't  quite  know  at  the  time.  It  was 
simply  to  be  with  him,  I  suppose — just 
once.  He's  in  danger,  and  I  wanted  him  to 
know  I  know  it.  It  makes  meeting  him — 
t  Cocker's,  for  it's  that  I  want  to  stay  on 
for — more  interesting. ' 

'It  makes  it  mighty  interesting  for  me!1 
Mr.  Mudge  freely  declared.  'Yet  he  didn't 
follow  you?'  he  asked,  '/would!' 

'Yes,  of  course.  That  was  the  way  you 
began,  you  know.  You're  awfully  inferior 
to  him. ' 

'Well,  my  dear,  you're  not  inferior  to  any 
body.  You've  got  a  cheek !  What  is  he  in 
danger  of?' 

'Of  being  found  out.     He's  in  love  with  a 


IN  THE  CAGE  149 

lady — and  it  isn't  right — and  I've  found  him 
out.' 

'That'll  be  a  look-out  for  me!'  Mr.  Mudge 
joked.  'You  mean  she  has  a  husband?' 

'Never  mind  what  she  has!  They're  in 
awful  danger,  but  his  is  the  worst,  because 
he's  in  danger  from  her  too.' 

'Like  me  from  you — the  woman  /  love? 
If  he's  in  the  same  funk  as  me ' 

'He's  in  a  worse  one.  He's  not  only 
afraid  of  the  lady — he's  afraid  of  other 
things. ' 

Mr.  Mudge  selected  another  chocolate 
cream.  'Well,  I'm  only  afraid  of  one!  But 
how  in  the  world  can  you  help  this  party?' 

'I  don't  know — perhaps  not  at  all.  But 
so  long  as  there's  a  chance ' 

'You  won't  come  away?' 

'No,  you've  got  to  wait  for  me.' 

Mr.  Mudge  enjoyed  what  was  in  his 
mouth.  'And  what  will  he  give  you?' 

'Give  me?' 

'If  you  do  help  him. ' 

'Nothing.     Nothing  in  all  the  wide  world.' 


i5o  IN  THE  CAGE 

'Then  what  will  he  give  mef  Mr.  Mudge 
inquired.  4 1  mean  for  waiting. ' 

The  girl  thought  a  moment ;  then  she  got 
up  to  walk.  'He  never  heard  of  you,'  she 
replied. 

'You  haven't  mentioned  me?' 

'We  never  mention  anything.  What  I've 
told  you  is  just  what  I've  found  out.' 

Mr.  Mudge,  who  had  remained  on  the 
bench,  looked  up  at  her ;  she  often  preferred 
to  be  quiet  when  he  proposed  to  walk,  but 
now  that  he  seemed  to  wish  to  sit  she  had  a 
desire  to  move.  'But  you  haven't  told  me 
what  he  has  found  out. ' 

She  considered  her  lover.  'He'd  never 
find^M,  my  dear!' 

Her  lover,  still  on  his  seat,  appealed  to  her 
in  something  of  the  attitude  in  which  she 
had  last  left  Captain  Everard,  but  the 
impression  was  not  the  same.  'Then  where 
do  I  come  in?' 

'You  don't  come  in  at  all.  That's  just 
the  beauty  of  it!' — and  with  this  she  turned 
to  mingle  with  the  multitude  collected  round 


IN  THE  CAGE  151 

the  band.  Mr.  Mudge  presently  overtook 
her  and  drew  her  arm  into  his  own  with  a 
quiet  force  that  expressed  the  serenity  of 
possession;  in  consonance  with  which  it 
was  only  when  they  parted  for  the  night  at 
her  door  that  he  referred  again  to  what  she 
had  told  him. 

'Have  you  seen  him  since?' 

'Since  the  night  in  the  Park?  No,  not 
once.' 

'Oh,  what  a  cad!'  said  Mr.  Mudge. 


XX 

It  was  not  until  the  end  of  October  that 
she  saw  Captain  Everard  again,  and  on  that 
occasion — the  only  one  of  all  the  series  on 
which  hindrance  had  been  so  utter — no 
communication  with  him  proved  possible. 
She  had  made  out,  even  from  the  cage,  that 
it  was  a  charming  golden  day:  a  patch 
of  hazy  autumn  sunlight  lay  across  the 
sanded  floor  and  also,  higher  up,  quick 
ened  into  brightness  a  row  of  ruddy 
bottled  syrups.  Work  was  slack  and  the 
place  in  general  empty;  the  town,  as  they 
said  in  the  cage,  had  not  waked  up,  and 
the  feeling  of  the  day  likened  itself  to 
something  that  in  happier  conditions  she 
would  have  thought  of  romantically  as  St. 
Martin's  summer.  The  counter-clerk  had 
gone  to  his  dinner;  she  herself  was  busy 
with  arrears  of  postal  jobs,  in  the  midst  of 

which     she    became     aware    that    Captain 
153 


154  IN  THE  CAGE 

Everard  had  apparently  been  in  the  shop  a 
minute  and  that  Mr.  Buckton  had  already 
seized  him. 

He  had,  as  usual,  half  a  dozen  telegrams, 
and  when  he  saw  that  she  saw  him  and  their 
eyes  met  he  gave,  on  bowing  to  her,  an 
exaggerated  laugh  in  which  she  read  a  new 
consciousness.  It  was  a  confession  of  awk 
wardness  ;  it  seemed  to  tell  her  that  of  course 
he  knew  he  ought  better  to  have  kept  his 
head,  ought  to  have  been  clever  enough  to 
wait,  on  some  pretext,  till  he  should  have 
found  her  free.  Mr.  Buckton  was  a  long 
time  with  him,  and  her  attention  was  soon 
demanded  by  other  visitors:  so  that  noth 
ing  passed  between  them  but  the  fulness  of 
their  silence.  The  look  she  took  from  him 
was  his  greeting,  and  the  other  one  a  simple 
sign  of  the  eyes  sent  her  before  going  out. 
The  only  token  they  exchanged,  therefore, 
was  his  tacit  assent  to  her  wish  that,  since 
they  couldn't  attempt  a  certain  frankness, 
they  should  attempt  nothing  at  all.  This 
was  her  intense  preference ;  she  could  be  as 


IN  THE  CAGE  155 

still  and  cold  as  any  one  when  that  was  the 
sole  solution. 

Yet,  more  than  any  contact  hitherto 
achieved,  these  counted  instants  struck  her 
as  marking  a  step :  they  were  built  so — just 
in  the  mere  flash — on  the  recognition  of  his 
now  definitely  knowing  what  it  was  she 
would  do  for  him.  The  'anything,  any 
thing'  she  had  uttered  in  the  Park  went  to 
and  fro  between  them  and  under  the  poked- 
out  chins  that  interposed.  It  had  all  at  last 
even  put  on  the  air  of  their  not  needing  now 
clumsily  to  manoeuvre  to  converse:  their 
former  little  postal  make-believes,  the 
intense  implications  of  questions  and 
answers  and  change,  had  become  in  the 
light  of  the  personal  fact,  of  their  having 
had  their  moment,  a  possibility  compara 
tively  poor.  It  was  as  if  they  had  met  for 
all  time — it  exerted  on  their  being  in  pres 
ence  again  an  influence  so  prodigious. 
When  she  watched  herself,  in  the  memory 
of  that  night,  walk  away  from  him  as  if  she 
were  making  an  end,  she  found  something 


156  IN  THE  CAGE 

too  pitiful  in  the  primness  of  such  a  gait. 
Hadn't  she  precisely  established  on  the  part 
of  each  a  consciousness  that  could  end  only 
with  death? 

It  must  be  admitted,  that,  in  spite  of  this 
brave  margin,  an  irritation,  after  he  had 
gone,  remained  with  her;  a  sense  that 
presently  became  one  with  a  still  sharper 
hatred  of  Mr.  Buckton,  who,  on  her  friend's 
withdrawal,  had  retired  with  the  telegrams 
to  the  sounder  and  left  her  the  other  work. 
She  knew  indeed  she  should  have  a  chance 
to  see  them,  when  she  would,  on  file;  and 
she  was  divided,  as  the  day  went  on,  between 
the  two  impressions  of  all  that  was  lost  and 
all  that  was  reasserted.  What  beset  her 
above  all,  and  as  she  had  almost  never 
known  it  before,  was  the  desire  to  bound 
straight  out,  to  overtake  the  autumn  after 
noon  before  it  passed  away  for  ever  and 
hurry  off  to  the  Park  and  perhaps  be  with 
him  there  again  on  a  bench.  It  became, 
for  an  hour,  a  fantastic  vision  with  her  that 
he  might  just  have  gone  to  sit  and  wait  for 


IN  THE  CAGE  157 

her.  She  could  almost  hear  him,  through 
the  tick  of  the  sounder,  scatter  with  his  stick, 
in  his  impatience,  the  fallen  leaves  of 
October.  Why  should  such  a  vision  seize 
her  at  this  particular  moment  with  such  a 
shake?  There  was  a  time — from  four  to 
five — when  she  could  have  cried  with  happi 
ness  and  rage. 

Business  quickened,  it  seemed,  toward 
five,  as  if  the  town  did  wake  up;  she  had 
therefore  more  to  do,  and  she  went  through 
it  with  little  sharp  stampings  and  jerkings: 
she  made  the  crisp  postal-orders  fairly  snap 
while  she  breathed  to  herself :  'It's  the  last 
day — the  last  day!'  The  last  day  of  what? 
She  couldn't  have  told.  All  she  knew  now 
was  that  if  she  were  out  of  the  cage  she 
wouldn't  in  the  least  have  minded,  this  time, 
its  not  yet  being  dark.  She  would  have 
gone  straight  toward  Park  Chambers  and 
have  hung  about  there  till  no  matter  when. 
She  would  have  waited,  stayed,  rung,  asked, 
have  gone  in,  sat  on  the  stairs.  What  the 
day  was  the  last  of  was  probably,  to  her 


158  IN  THE  CAGE 

strained  inner  sense,  the  group  of  golden 
ones,  of  any  occasion  for  seeing  the  hazy 
sunshine  slant  at  that  angle  into  the  smelly 
shop,  of  any  range  of  chances  for  his  wish 
ing  still  to  repeat  to  her  the  two  words 
that,  in  the  Park,  she  had  scarcely  let  him 
bring  out.  '  See  here — see  here ! ' — the  sound 
of  these  two  words  had  been  with  her  per 
petually  ;  but  it  was  in  her  ears  to-day  with 
out  mercy,  with  a  loudness  that  grew  and 
grew.  What  was  it  they  then  expressed? 
what  was  it  he  had  wanted  her  to  see?  She 
seemed,  whatever  it  was,  perfectly  to  see  it 
now — to  see  that  if  she  should  just  chuck 
the  whole  thing,  should  have  a  great  and 
beautiful  courage,  he  would  somehow  make 
everything  up  to  her.  When  the  clock 
struck  five  she  was  on  the  very  point  of  say 
ing  to  Mr.  Buckton  that  she  was  deadly  ill 
and  rapidly  getting  worse.  This  announce 
ment  was  on  her  lips,  and  she  had  quite 
composed  the  pale,  hard  face  she  would 
offer  him:  'I  can't  stop — I  must  go  home. 
If  I  feel  better,  later  on,  I'll  come  back. 


IN  THE  CAGE  159 

I'm  very  sorry,  but  I  must  go.'  At  that 
instant  Captain  Everard  once  more  stood 
there,  producing  in  her  agitated  spirit,  by 
his  real  presence,  the  strangest,  quickest 
revolution.  He  stopped  her  off  without 
knowing  it,  and  by  the  time  he  had  been  a 
minute  in  the  shop  she  felt  that  she  was 
saved. 

That  was  from  the  first  minute  what  she 
called  it  to  herself.  There  were  again  other 
persons  with  whom  she  was  occupied,  and 
again  the  situation  could  only  be  expressed 
by  their  silence.  It  was  expressed,  in  fact, 
in  a  larger  phrase  than  ever  yet,  for  her  eyes 
now  spoke  to  him  with  a  kind  of  supplica 
tion.  'Be  quiet,  be  quiet!  they  pleaded; 
and  they  saw  his  own  reply:  'I'll  do  what 
ever  you  say;  I  won't  even  look  at  you — 
see,  see!'  They  kept  conveying  thus,  with 
the  friendliest  liberality,  that  they  wouldn't 
look,  quite  positively  wouldn't.  What  she 
was  to  see  was  that  he  hovered  at  the  other 
end  of  the  counter,  Mr.  Buckton's  end, 
surrendered  himself  again  to  that  frustra- 


160  IN  THE  CAGE 

tion.  It  quickly  proved  so  great  indeed  that 
what  she  was  to  see  further  was  how  he 
turned  away  before  he  was  attended  to,  and 
hung  off,  waiting,  smoking,  looking  about 
the  shop;  how  he  went  over  to  Mr.  Cocker's 
own  counter  and  appeared  to  price  things, 
gave  in  fact  presently  two  or  three  orders 
and  put  down  money,  stood  there  a  long 
time  with  his  back  to  her,  considerately 
abstaining  from  any  glance  round  to  see  if 
she  were  free.  It  at  last  came  to  pass  in 
this  way  that  he  had  remained  in  the  shop 
longer  that  she  had  ever  yet  known  him  to 
do,  and  that,  nevertheless,  when  he  did  turn 
about  she  could  see  him  time  himself — she 
was  freshly  taken  up — and  cross  straight  to 
her  postal  subordinate,  whom  some  one 
else  had  released.  He  had  in  his  hand  all 
this  while  neither  letters  nor  telegrams,  and 
now  that  he  was  close  to  her — for  she  was 
close  to  the  counter-clerk — it  brought  her 
heart  into  her  mouth  merely  to  see  him  look 
at  her  neighbor  and  open  his  lips.  She  was 
too  nervous  to  bear  it.  He  asked  for  a  Post- 


IN  THE  CAGE  161 

office  Guide,  and  the  young  man  whipped  out 
a  new  one;  whereupon  he  said  that  he 
wished  not  to  purchase,  but  only  to  consult 
one  a  moment;  with  which,  the  copy  kept 
on  loan  being  produced,  he  once  more  wan 
dered  off. 

What  was  he  doing  to  her?  What  did  he 
want  of  her?  Well,  it  was  just  the  aggra 
vation  of  his  'See  here!'  She  felt  at  this 
moment  strangely  and  portentously  afraid 
of  him — had  in  her  ears  the  hum  of  a  sense 
that,  should  it  come  to  that  kind  of  tension, 
she  must  fly  on  the  spot  to  Chalk  Farm. 
Mixed  with  her  dread  and  with  her  reflec 
tion  was  the  idea  that,  if  he  wanted  her  so 
much  as  he  seemed  to  show,  it  might  be 
after  all  simply  to  do  for  him  the  'anything' 
she  had  promised,  the  'everything'  she  had 
thought  it  so  fine  to  bring  out  to  Mr.  Mudge. 
He  might  want  her  to  help  him,  might  have 
some  particular  appeal;  though,  of  a  truth, 
his  manner  didn't  denote  that — denoted  on 
the  contrary,  an  embarrassment,  an  inde 
cision,  something  of  a  desire  not  so  much  to 


i6a  IN  THE  CAGE 

be  helped  as  to  be  treated  rather  more  nicely 
than  she  had  treated  him  the  other  time. 
Yes,  he  considered  quite  probably  that  he 
had  help  rather  to  offer  than  to  ask  for. 
Still,  none  the  less,  when  he  again  saw  her 
free  he  continued  to  keep  away  from  her, 
when  he  came  back  with  his  Giiide  it  was 
Mr.  Buckton  he  caught — it  was  from  Mr. 
Buckton  he  obtained  half-a-crown's  worth  of 
stamps. 

After  asking  for  the  stamps  he  asked,  quite 
as  a  second  thought,  for  a  postal-order  for 
ten  shillings.  What  did  he  want  with  so 
many  stamps  when  he  wrote  so  few  letters? 
How  could  he  enclose  a  postal-order  in  a 
telegram?  She  expected  him,  the  next 
thing,  to  go  into  the  corner  and  make  up 
one  of  his  telegrams — half-a-dozen  of  them 
— on  purpose  to  prolong  his  presence.  She 
had  so  completely  stopped  looking  at  him 
that  she  could  only  guess  his  movements — 
guess  even  where  his  eyes  rested.  Finally 
she  saw  him  make  a  dash  that  might  have 
been  towards  the  nook  where  the  forms 


IN  THE  CAGE  163 

were  hung;  and  at  this  she  suddenly  felt 
that  she  couldn't  keep  it  up.  The  counter- 
clerk  had  just  taken  a  telegram  from  a 
slavey,  and,  to  give  herself  something  to 
cover  her,  she  snatched  it  out  of  his  hand. 
The  gesture  was  so  violent  that  he  gave  her 
an  odd  look,  and  she  also  perceived  that 
Mr.  Buckton  noticed  it.  The  latter  person 
age,  with  a  quick  stare  at  her,  appeared  for 
an  instant  to  wonder  whether  his  snatching 
it  in  his  turn  mightn't  be  the  thing  she 
would  least  like,  and  she  anticipated  his 
practical  criticism  by  the  frankest  glare  she 
had  ever  given  him.  It  sufficed:  this  time 
it  paralyzed  him ;  and  she  sought  with  her 
trophy  the  refuge  of  the  sounder. 


XXI 

It  was  repeated  the  next  day;  it  went  on 
for  three  days ;  and  at  the  end  of  that  time 
she  knew  what  to  think.  When,  at  the 
beginning-,  she  had  emerged  from  her 
temporary  shelter  Captain  Everard  had 
quitted  the  shop ;  and  he  had  not  come  again 
that  evening,  as  it  had  struck  her  he  possibly 
might — might  all  the  more  easily  that  there 
were  numberless  persons  who  came,  morn 
ing  and  afternoon,  numberless  times,  so  that 
he  wouldn't  necessarily  have  attracted  atten 
tion.  The  second  day  it  was  different,  and 
yet  on  the  whole  worse.  His  access  to  her 
had  become  possible — she  felt  herself  even 
reaping  the  fruit  of  her  yesterday's  glare  at 
Mr.  Buckton;  but  transacting  his  business 
with  him  didn't  simplify — it  could,  in  spite 
of  the  rigour  of  circumstance,  feed  so  her 
new  conviction.  The  rigour  was  tremen 
dous,  and  his  telegrams — not,  now,  mere 
165 


166  IN  THE  CAGE 

pretexts  for  getting  at  her — were  apparently 
genuine ;  yet  the  conviction  had  taken  but  a 
night  to  develop.  It  could  be  simply 
enough  expressed;  she  had  had  the  glim 
mer  of  it  the  day  before  in  her  idea  that  he 
needed  no  more  help  than  she  had  already 
given ;  that  it  was  help  he  himself  was  pre 
pared  to  render.  He  had  come  up  to  town 
but  for  three  or  four  days;  he  had  been 
absolutely  obliged  to  be  absent  after  the 
other  time ;  yet  he  would,  now  that  he  was 
face  to  face  with  her,  stay  on  as  much 
longer  as  she  liked.  Little  by  little  it  was 
thus  clarified,  though  from  the  first  flash  of 
his  reappearance  she  had  read  into  it  the 
real  essence. 

That  was  what  the  night  before,  at  eight 
o'clock,  her  hour  to  go,  had  made  her  hang 
back  and  dawdle.  She  did  last  things  or 
pretended  to  do  them ;  to  be  in  the  cage  had 
suddenly  become  her  safety,  and  she  was 
literally  afraid  of  the  alternate  self  who 
might  be  waiting  outside.  He  might  be 
waiting;  it  was  he  who  was  her  alternate 


IN  THE  CAGE  167 

self,  and  of  him  she  was  afraid.  The  most 
extraordinary  change  had  taken  place  in 
her  from  the  moment  of  her  catching  the 
impression  he  seemed  to  have  returned  on 
purpose  to  give  her.  Just  before  she  had 
done  so,  on  that  bewitched  afternoon,  she 
had  seen  herself  approach,  without  a  scruple, 
the  porter  at  Park  Chambers;  then,  as  the 
effect  of  the  rush  of  a  consciousness  quite 
altered,  she  had,  on  at  last  quitting  Cocker's, 
gone  straight  home  for  the  first  time  since 
her  return  from  Bournemouth.  She  had 
passed  his  door  every  night  for  weeks,  but 
nothing  would  have  induced  her  to  pass  it 
now.  This  change  was  the  tribute  of  her 
fear — the  result  of  a  change  in  himself  as  to 
which  she  needed  no  more  explanation  than 
his  mere  face  vividly  gave  her;  strange 
though  it  was  to  find  an  element  of  deter 
rence  in  the  object  that  she  regarded  as  the 
most  beautiful  in  the  world.  He  had  taken 
it  from  her  in  the  Park  that  night  that  she 
wanted  him  not  to  propose  to  her  to  sup; 
but  he  had  put  away  the  lesson  by  this  time 


168  IN  THE  CAGE 

— he  practically  proposed  supper  every  time 
he  looked  at  her.  This  was  what,  for  that 
matter,  mainly  rilled  the  three  days.  He 
came  in  twice  on  each  of  these,  and  it  was  as 
if  he  came  in  to  give  her  a  chance  to  relent. 
That  was,  after  all,  she  said  to  herself  in  the 
intervals,  the  most  that  he  did.  There 
were  ways,  she  fully  recognised,  in  which 
he  spared  her,  and  other  particular  ways  as 
to  which  she  meant  that  her  silence  should 
be  full,  to  him,  of  exquisite  pleading.  The 
most  particular  of  all  was  his  not  being  out 
side,  at  the  corner,  when  she  quitted  the 
place  for  the  night.  This  he  might  so  easily 
have  been — so  easily  if  he  hadn't  been  so 
nice.  She  continued  to  recognise  in  his 
forbearance  the  fruit  of  her  dumb  supplica 
tion,  and  the  only  compensation  he  found 
for  it  was  the  harmless  freedom  of  being 
able  to  appear  to  say:  'Yes,  I'm  in  town  only 
for  three  or  four  days,  but,  you  know,  I 
would  stay  on.'  He  struck  her  as  calling 
attention  each  day,  each  hour,  to  the  rapid 
ebb  of  time ;  he  exaggerated  to  the  point  of 


IN  THE  CAGE  169 

putting  it  that  there  were  only  two  days 
more,  that  there  was  at  last,  dreadfully, 
only  one. 

There  were  other  things  still  that  he 
struck  her  as  doing  with  a  special  intention ; 
as  to  the  most  marked  of  which — unless 
indeed  it  were  the  most  obscure — she  might 
well  have  marvelled  that  it  didn't  seem  to 
her  more  horrid.  It  was  either  the  frenzy 
of  her  imagination  or  the  disorder  of  his 
baffled  passion  that  gave  her  once  or  twice 
the  vision  of  his  putting  down  redundant 
money — sovereigns  not  concerned  with  the 
little  payments  he  was  perpetually  making 
— so  that  she  might  give  him  some  sign  of 
helping  him  to  slip  them  over  to  her. 
What  was  most  extraordinary  in  this 
impression  was  the  amount  of  excuse  that, 
with  some  incoherence,  she  found  for  him. 
He  wanted  to  pay  her  because  there  was 
nothing  to  pay  her  for.  He  wanted  to  offer 
her  things  that  he  knew  she  wouldn't  take. 
He  wanted  to  show  her  how  much  he 
respected  her  by  giving  her  the  supreme 


1 7o  IN  THE  CAGE 

chance  to  show  him  she  was  respectable. 
Over  the  driest  transactions,  at  any  rate, 
their  eyes  had  out  these  questions.  On  the 
third  day  he  put  iu  a  telegram  that  had  evi 
dently  something  of  the  same  point  as  the 
stray  sovereigns — a  message  that  was,  in 
the  first  place,  concocted  and  that,  on  a 
second  thought,  he  took  back  from  her 
before  she  had  stamped  it.  He  had  given 
her  time  to  read  it  and  had  only  then 
bethought  himself  that  he  had  better  not 
send  it.  If  it  was  not  to  Lady  Bradeen  at 
Twindle — where  she  knew  her  ladyship  then 
to  be — this  was  because  an  address  to  Doctor 
Buzzard  at  Brickwood  was  just  as  good, 
with  the  added  merit  of  its  not  giving  away 
quite  so  much  a  person  whom  he  had  still, 
after  all,  in  a  manner  to  consider.  It  was 
of  course  most  complicated,  only  half 
lighted;  but  there  was,  discernibly  enough, 
a  scheme  of  communication  in  which  Lady 
Bradeen  at  Twindle  and  Dr.  Buzzard  at 
Brickwood  were,  within  limits,  one  and  the 
same  person.  The  words  he  had  shown 


IN  THE  CAGE  171 

her  and  then  taken  back  consisted,  at  all 
events,  of  the  brief  but  vivid  phrase:  'Abso 
lutely  impossible.'  The  point  was  not  that 
she  should  transmit  it;  the  point  was  just 
that  she  should  see  it.  What  was  absolutely 
impossible  was  that  before  he  had  settled 
something  at  Cocker's  he  should  go  either 
to  Twindle  or  to  Brickwood. 

The  logic  of  this,  in  turn,  for  herself,  was 
that  she  could  lend  herself  to  no  settlement 
so  long  as  she  so  intensely  knew.  What 
she  knew  was  that  he  was,  almost  under 
peril  of  life,  clenched  in  a  situation :  there 
fore  how  could  she  also  know  where  a  poor 
girl  in  the  P.  O.  might  really  stand?  It  was 
more  a'nd  more  between  them  that  if  he 
might  convey  to  her  that  he  was  free,  that 
everything  she  had  seen  so  deep  into  was  a 
closed  chapter,  her  own  case  might  become 
different  for  her,  she  might  understand  and 
meet  him  and  listen.  But  he  could  convey 
nothing  of  the  sort,  and  he  only  fidgeted  and 
floundered  in  his  want  of  power.  The 
chapter  wasn't  in  the  least  closed,  not  for 


i72  IN  THE  CAGE 

the  other  party ;  and  the  other  party  had  a 
pull,  somehow  and  somewhere:  this  his 
whole  attitude  and  expression  confessed,  at 
the  same  time  that  they  entreated  her  not 
to  remember  and  not  to  mind.  So  long  as 
she  did  remember  and  did  mind  he  could 
only  circle  about  and  go  and  come,  doing 
futile  things  of  which  he  was  ashamed. 
He  was  ashamed  of  his  two  words  to  Dr. 
Buzzard,  and  went  out  of  the  shop  as  soon 
as  he  had  crumpled  up  the  paper  again  and 
thrust  it  into  his  pocket.  It  had  been  an 
abject  little  exposure  of  dreadful,  impossible 
passion.  He  appeared  in  fact  to  be  too 
ashamed  to  come  back.  He  had  left  town 
again,  and  a  first  week  elapsed,  and  a 
second.  He  had  had  naturally  to  return  to 
the  real  mistress  of  his  fate;  she  had  insisted 
— she  knew  how,  and  he  couldn't  put  in 
another  hour.  There  was  always  a  day  when 
she  called  time.  It  was  known  to  our  young 
friend  moreover  that  he  had  now  been  des 
patching  telegrams  from  other  offices.  She 
knew  at  last  so  much  that  she  had  quite  lost 


IN  THE  CAGE  173 

her  earlier  sense  of  merely  guessing.  There 
were  no  shades  of  distinctness — it  all  bounced 
out. 


XXII 

Eighteen  days  elapsed,  and  she  had  begun 
to  think  it  probable  she  should  never  see 
him  again.  He  too  then  understood  now: 
he  had  made  out  that  she  had  secrets  and 
reasons  and  impediments,  that  even  a  poor 
girl  at  the  P.  O.  might  have  her  complica 
tions.  With  the  charm  she  had  cast  on  him 
lightened  by  distance  he  had  suffered  a  final 
delicacy  to  speak  to  him,  had  made  up  his 
mind  that  it  would  be  only  decent  to  let  her 
alone.  Never  so  much  as  during  these 
latter  days  had  she  felt  the  precariousness 
of  their  relation  —  the  happy,  beautiful, 
untroubled  original  one,  if  it  could  only 
have  been  restored  —  in  which  the  public 
servant  and  the  casual  public  only  were 
concerned.  It  hung  at  the  best  by  the 
merest  silken  thread,  which  was  at  the 
mercy  of  any  accident  and  might  snap  at 

any  minute.     She  arrived  by  the  end  of  the 

175 


176  IN  THE  CAGE 

fortnight  at  the  highest  sense  of  actual 
fitness,  never  doubting  that  her  decision  was 
now  complete.  She  would  just  give  him  a 
few  days  more  to  come  back  to  her  on  a 
proper  impersonal  basis  —  for  even  to  an 
embarrassing  representative  of  the  casual 
public  a  public  servant  with  a  conscience  did 
owe  something — and  then  would  signify  to 
Mr.  Mudge  that  she  was  ready  for  the  little 
home.  It  had  been  visited,  in  the  further 
talk  she  had  had  with  him  at  Bournemouth, 
from  garret  to  cellar,  and  they  had  especially 
lingered,  with  their  respectively  darkened 
brows,  before  the  niche  into  which  it  was  to 
be  broached  to  her  mother  that  she  was  to 
find  means  to  fit. 

He  had  put  it  to  her  more  definitely  than 
before  that  his  calculations  had  allowed  for 
that  dingy  presence,  and  he  had  thereby 
marked  the  greatest  impression  he  had  ever 
made  on  her.  It  was  a  stroke  superior  even 
again  to  his  handling  of  the  drunken  soldier. 
What  she  considered  that,  in  the  face  of  it, 
she  hung  on  at  Cocker's  for,  was  some- 


IN  THE  CAGE  177 

thing  that  she  could  only  have  described  as 
the  common  fairness  of  a  last  word.  Her 
actual  last  word  had  been,  till  it  should  be 
superseded,  that  she  wouldn't  abandon  her 
other  friend,  and  it  stuck  to  her,  through 
thick  and  thin,  that  she  was  still  at  her  post 
and  on  her  honor.  This  other  friend  had 
shown  so  much  beauty  of  conduct  already 
that  he  would  surely,  after  all,  just  reappear 
long  enough  to  relieve  her,  to  give  her 
something  she  could  take  away.  She  saw 
it,  caught  it,  at  times,  his  parting  present; 
and  there  were  moments  when  she  felt  her 
self  sitting  like  a  beggar  with  a  hand  held 
out  to  an  almsgiver  who  only  fumbled.  She 
hadn't  taken  the  sovereigns,  but  she  would 
take  the  penny.  She  heard,  in  imagination, 
on  the  counter,  the  ring  of  the  copper. 
'Don't  put  yourself  out  any  longer,'  he 
would  say,  'for  so  bad  a  case.  You've  done 
all  there  is  to  be  done.  I  thank  and  acquit 
and  release  you.  Our  lives  take  us.  I  don't 
know  much — though  I  have  really  been 
interested — about  yours  ;  but  I  suppose 


178  IN  THE  CAGE 

you've  got  one.  Mine,  at  any  rate,  will  take 
me — and  where  it  will.  Heigh-ho!  Good 
bye.'  And  then  once  more,  for  the  sweet 
est,  faintest  flower  of  all:  'Only  I  say — see 
here!"  She  had  framed  the  whole  picture 
with  a  squareness  that  included  also  the 
image  of  how  again  she  would  decline  to 
'see  there,'  decline,  as  she  might  say,  to  see 
anywhere  or  anything.  Yet  it  befell  that 
just  in  the  fury  of  this  escape  she  saw  more 
than  ever. 

He  came  back  one  night  with  a  rush,  near 
the  moment  of  their  closing,  and  showed  her 
a  face  so  different  and  new,  so  upset  and 
anxious,  that  almost  anything  seemed  to 
look  out  of  it  but  clear  recognition.  He 
poked  in  a  telegram  very  much  as  if  the 
simple  sense  of  pressure,  the  distress  of 
extreme  haste,  had  blurred  the  remembrance 
of  where  in  particular  he  was.  But  as  she 
met  his  eyes  a  light  came;  it  broke  indeed 
on  the  spot  into  a  positive,  conscious  glare. 
That  made  up  for  everything,  for  it  was  an 
instant  proclamation  of  the  celebrated  'dan- 


IN  THE  CAGE  179 

ger' ;  it  seemed  to  pour  things  out  in  a  flood. 
'Oh  yes,  here  it  is — it's  upon  me  at  last! 
Forget,  for  God's  sake,  my  having  worried 
or  bored  you,  and  just  help  me,  just  save 
me,  by  getting  this  off  without  the  loss  of  a 
second  !'  Something  grave  had  clearly 
occurred,  a  crisis  declared  itself.  She 
recognized  immediately  the  person  to  whom 
the  telegram  was  addressed — the  Miss  Dol 
man,  of  Parade  Lodge,  to  whom  Lady 
Bradeen  had  wired,  at  Dover,  on  the  last 
occasion,  and  whom  she  had  then,  with  her 
recollection  of  previous  arrangements,  fitted 
into  a  particular  setting.  Miss  Dolman  had 
figured  before  and  not  figured  since,  but  she 
was  now  the  subject  of  an  imperative  appeal. 
'Absolutely  necessary  to  see  you.  Take  last 
train  Victoria  if  you  can  catch  it.  If  not, 
earliest  morning,  and  answer  me  direct 
either  way. ' 

'Reply  paid?'  said  the  girl.  Mr.  Buckton 
had  just  departed,  and  the  counter  -  clerk 
was  at  the  sounder.  There  was  no  other 
representative  of  the  public  and  she  had 


i8o  IN  THE  CAGE 

never  yet,  as  it  seemed  to  her,  not  even  in 
the  street  or  in  the  Park,  been  so  alone  with 
him. 

'Oh  yes,  reply  paid,  and  as  sharp  as  possi 
ble,  please. ' 

She  affixed  the  stamps  in  a  flash  'She'll 
catch  the  train!'  she  then  declared  to  him 
breathlessly,  as  if  she  could  absolutely  guar 
antee  it. 

'I  don't  know — I  hope  so.  It's  awfully 
important.  So  kind  of  you.  Awfully  sharp, 
please.'  It  was  wonderfully  innocent  now, 
his  oblivion  of  all  but  his  danger.  Anything 
else  that  had  ever  passed  between  them  was 
utterly  out  of  it.  Well,  she  had  wanted  him 
to  be  impersonal ! 

There  was  less  of  the  same  need,  there 
fore,  happily  for  herself ;  yet  she  only  took 
time,  before  she  flew  to  the  sounder,  to  gasp 
at  him:  'You're  in  trouble?' 

'Horrid,  there's  a  row!'  But  they  parted, 
on  it,  in  the  next  breath,  and  as  she  dashed 
at  the  sounder,  almost  pushing,  in  her 
violence,  the  counter-clerk  off  the  stool,  she 


IN  THE  CAGE  181 

caught  the  bang  with  which,  at  Cocker's 
door,  in  his  further  precipitation,  he  closed 
the  apron  of  the  cab  into  which  he  had 
leaped.  As  he  rushed  off  to  some  other 
precaution  suggested  by  his  alarm  his  appeal 
to  Miss  Dolman  flashed  straight  away. 

But  she  had  not  on  the  morrow,  been  in 
the  place  five  minutes  before  he  was  with 
her  again,  still  more  discomposed  and  quite, 
now,  as  she  said  to  herself,  like  a  frightened 
child  coming  to  its  mother.  Her  compan 
ions  were  there,  and  she  felt  it  to  be 
remarkable  how,  in  the  presence  of  his 
agitation,  his  mere  scared,  exposed  nature, 
she  suddenly  ceased  to  mind.  It  came  to  her 
as  it  had  never  come  to  her  before  that  with 
absolute  directness  and  assurance  they  might 
carry  almost  anything  off.  He  had  nothing 
to  send — she  was  sure  he  had  been  wiring 
all  over — and  yet  his  business  was  evidently 
huge.  There  was  nothing  but  that  in  his 
eyes — not  a  glimmer  of  reference  or  memory. 
He  was  almost  haggard  with  anxiety  and 
had  clearly  not  slept  a  wink.  Her  pity  for 


182  IN  THE  CAGE 

him  would  have  given  her  any  courage,  and 
she  seemed  to  know  at  last  why  she  had  been 
such  a  fool.  'She  didn't  come  ?'  she  panted. 

'Oh  yes,  she  came,  but  there  has  been 
some  mistake.  We  want  a  telegram. ' 

'A  telegram?' 

'One  that  was  sent  from  here  ever  so  long 
ago.  There  was  something  in  it  that  has  to 
be  recovered.  Something  very,  very  im 
portant,  please — we  want  it  immediately. ' 

He  really  spoke  to  her  as  if  she  had  been 
some  strange  young  woman  at  Knights- 
bridge  or  Paddington ;  but  it  had  no  other 
effect  on  her  than  to  give  her  the  measure  of 
his  tremendous  flurry.  Then  it  was  that, 
above  all,  she  felt  how  much  she  had  missed 
in  the  gaps  and  blanks  and  absent  answers — 
how  much  she  had  had  to  dispense  with :  it 
was  black  darkness  now,  save  for  this  little 
wild  red  flare.  So  much  as  that  she  saw  and 
possessed.  One  of  the  lovers  was  quaking 
somewhere  out  of  town,  and  the  other  was 
quaking  just  where  he  stood.  This  was 
vivid  enough,  and  after  an  instant  she  knew 


IN  THE  CAGE  183 

it  was  all  she  wanted.  She  wanted  no 
detail,  no  fact — she  wanted  no  nearer  vision 
of  discovery  or  shame.  'When  was  your 
telegram?  Do  you  mean  you  sent  it  from 
here?'  She  tried  to  do  the  young  woman  at 
Knightsbridge. 

kOh  yes,  from  here — several  weeks  ago. 
Five,  six,  seven' — he  was  confused  and 
impatient — 'don't  you  remember?' 

'Remember?'  she  could  scarcely  keep  out 
of  her  face,  at  the  word,  the  strangest  of 
smiles. 

But  the  way  he  didn't  catch  what  it  meant 
was  perhaps  even  stranger  still.  'I  mean, 
don't  you  keep  the  old  ones?' 

'For  a  certain  time.' 

'But  how  long?' 

She  thought;  she  must  do  the  young 
woman,  and  she  knew  exactly  what  the 
young  woman  would  say  and,  still  more, 
wouldn't.  'Can  you  give  me  the  date?' 

'Oh  God,  no!  It  was  some  time  or  other 
in  August — toward  the  end.  It  was  to  the 
same  address  as  the  one  I  gave  you  last  night. ' 


1 84  IN  THE  CAGE 

'Oh!'  said  the  girl,  knowing  at  this  the 
deepest  thrill  she  had  ever  felt.  It  came  to 
her  there,  with  her  eyes  on  his  face,  that 
she  held  the  whole  thing  in  her  hand,  held 
it  as  she  held  her  pencil,  which  might  have 
broken  at  that  instant  in  her  tightened  grip. 
This  made  her  feel  like  the  very  fountain 
of  fate,  but  the  emotion  was  such  a  flood 
that  she  had  to  press  it  back  with  all  her 
force.  That  was  positively  the  reason, 
again,  of  her  flute-like  Paddington  tone. 

'You  can't  give  us  anything  a  little 
nearer?'  Her  'little'  and  her  'us'  came 
straight  from  Paddington.  These  things 
were  no  false  note  for  him — his  difficulty 
absorbed  them  all.  The  eyes  with  which 
he  pressed  her,  and  in  the  depths  of  which 
she  read  terror  and  rage  and  literal  tears, 
were  just  the  same  he  would  have  shown  any 
other  prim  person. 

'I  don't  know  the  date.  I  only  know  the 
thing  went  from  here,  and  just  about  the 
time  I  speak  of.  It  wasn't  delivered,  you 
see.  We've  got  to  recover  it. ' 


XXIII 

She  was  as  struck  with  the  beauty  of  his 
plural  pronoun  as  she  had  judged  he  might 
be  with  that  of  her  own ;  but  she  knew  now 
so  well  what  she  was  about  that  she  could 
almost  play  with  him  and  with  her  new 
born  joy.  'You  say  "about  the  time  you 
speak  of."  But  I  don't  think  you  speak  of 
an  exact  time — do  you?' 

He  looked  splendidly  helpless.  'That's 
just  what  I  want  to  find  out.  Don't  you 
keep  the  old  ones? — can't  you  look  it  up?' 

Our  young  lady  —  still  at  Paddington — 
turned  the  question  over.  'It  wasn't  deliv 
ered?' 

'Yts  it  was;  yet,  at  the  same  time,  don't 
you  know?  it  wasn't.'  He  jnist  hung  back, 
but  he  brought  it  out.  'I  mean  it  was 
intercepted,  don't  you  know?  and  there  was 
something  in  it. '  He  paused  again  and,  as 

if  to  further  his  quest  and  woo  and  suppli- 
'85 


1 86  IN  THE  CAGE 

cate  success  and  recovery,  even  smiled  with 
an  effort  at  the  agreeable  that  was  almost 
ghastly  and  that  turned  the  knife  in  her 
tenderness.  What  must  be  the  pain  of  it 
all,  of  the  open  gulf  and  the  throbbing 
fever,  when  this  was  the  mere  hot  breath? 
'We  want  to  get  what  was  in  it — to  know 
what  it  was. ' 

'I  see — I  see."  She  managed  just  the 
accent  they  had  at  Paddington  when  they 
stared  like  dead  fish.  'And  you  have  no 
clue?' 

'Not  at  all — I've  the  clue  I've  just  given 
you.' 

'Oh,  the  last  of  August?'  If  she  kept  it 
up  long  enough  she  would  make  him  really 
angry. 

'Yes,  and  the  address,  as  I've  said.' 

'Oh,  the  same  as  last  night?' 

He  visibly  quivered,  as  if  with  a  gleam 
of  hope;  but  it  only  poured  oil  on  her 
quietude,  and  she  was  still  deliberate.  She 
ranged  some  papers.  'Won't  you  look?'  he 
went  on. 


IN  THE  CAGE  187 

'I  remember  your  coming,'  she  replied. 

He  blinked  with  a  new  uneasiness;  it 
might  have  begun  to  come  to  him,  through 
her  difference,  that  he  was  somehow  differ 
ent  himself.  'You  were  much  quicker  then, 
you  know ! ' 

'So  were  you — you  must  do  me  that 
justice,'  she  answered  with  a  smile.  'But 
let  me  see.  Wasn't  it  Dover?' 

'Yes,  Miss  Dolman ' 

'Parade  Lodge,  Parade  Terrace?' 

'Exactly — thank  you  so  awfully  much!' 
He  began  to  hope  again.  'Then  you  have 
it — the  other  one?' 

She  hesitated  afresh;  she  quite  dangled 
him.  'It  was  brought  by  a  lady?' 

'Yes;  and  she  put  in  by  mistake  some 
thing  wrong.  That's  what  we've  got  to  get 
hold  of!' 

Heavens,  what  was  he  going  to  say? — 
flooding  poor  Paddington  with  wild  be 
trayals  !  She  couldn't  too  much,  for  her  joy, 
dangle  him,  yet  she  couldn't  either,  for  his 
dignity,  warn  or  control  or  check  him. 


i88  IN  THE  CAGE 

What  she  found  herself  doing  was  just  to 
treat  herself  to  the  middle  way.  'It  was 
intercepted?' 

'It  fell  into  the  wrong  hands.  But  there's 
something  in  it, '  he  continued  to  blurt  out, 
'that  may  be  all  right.  That  is  if  it's  wrong, 
don't  you  know?  It's  all  right  if  it's  wrong,' 
he  remarkably  explained. 

What  was  he,  on  earth,  going  to  say?  Mr. 
Buckton  and  the  counter-clerk  were  already 
interested ;  no  one  would  have  the  decency 
to  come  in ;  and  she  was  divided  between 
her  particular  terror  for  him  and  her  general 
curiosity.  Yet  she  already  saw  with  what 
brilliancy  she  could  add,  to  carry  the  thing 
off,  a  little  false  knowledge  to  all  her  real. 
'I  quite  understand,'  she  said  with  benev 
olent,  with  almost  patronizing  quickness. 
'The  lady  has  forgotten  what  she  did  put.' 

'Forgotten  most  wretchedly,  and  it's  an 
immense  inconvenience.  It  has  only  just 
been  found  that  it  didn't  get  there ;  so  that 
if  we  could  immediately  have  it ' 

'Immediately?' 


IN  THE  CAGE  189 

'Every  minute  counts.  You  have,'  he 
pleaded,  'surely  got  them  on  file.' 

'So  that  you  can  see  it  on  the  spot?' 

'Yes,  please  —  this  very  minute.'  The 
counter  rang  with  his  knuckles,  with  the 
knob  of  his  stick,  with  his  panic  of  alarm. 

4  Do,  do  hunt  it  up ! '  he  repeated. 

'I  dare  say  we  could  get  it  for  you,'  the 
girl  sweetly  returned. 

'  Get  it  ?'  —he  looked  aghast.     '  When  ? ' 

'  Probably  by  to-morrow. ' 

'Then  it  isn't  here?' — his  face  was  pitiful. 

She  caught  only  the  uncovered  gleams 
that  peeped  out  of  the  blackness,  and  she 
wondered  what  complication,  even  among 
the  most  supposable,  the  very  worst,  could 
be  bad  enough  to  account  for  the  degree 
of  his  terror.  There  were  twists  and  turns, 
there  were  places  where  the  screw  drew 
blood,  that  she  couldn't  guess.  She  was 
more  and  more  glad  she  didn't  want  to.  'It 
has  been  sent  on. ' 

'But  how  do  you  know  if  you  don't  look?' 

She  gave  him  a  smile  that  was  meant  to 


i9o  IN  THE  CAGE 

be,  in  the  absolute  irony  of  its  propriety, 
quite  divine.  'It  was  August  23rd,  and  we 
have  nothing  later  here  than  August  27th.' 

Something  leaped  into  his  face.  '27th — 
23rd?  Then  you're  sure?  You  know?' 

She  felt  she  scarce  knew  what — as  if  she 
might  soon  be  pounced  upon  for  some  lurid 
connection  with  a  scandal.  It  was  the 
queerest  of  all  sensations,  for  she  had  heard, 
she  had  read,  of  these  things  and  the  wealth 
of  her  intimacy  with  them  at  Cocker's  might 
be  supposed  to  have  schooled  and  seasoned 
her.  This  particular  one  that  she  had  really 
quite  lived  with  was,  after  all,  an  old  story ; 
yet  what  it  had  been  before  was  dim  and 
distant  beside  the  touch  under  which  she 
now  winced.  Scandal? — it  had  never  been 
but  a  silly  word.  Now  it  was  a  great  palpa 
ble  surface,  and  the  surface  was  somehow, 
Captain  Everhard's  wonderful  face.  Deep 
down  in  his  eyes  was  a  picture,  the  vision  of 
a  great  place  like  a  chamber  of  justice, 
where,  before  a  watching  crowd,  a  poor  girl, 
exposed  but  heroic,  swore  with  a  quavering 


IN  THE  CAGE  191 

voice  to  a  document,  proved  an  alibi,  sup 
plied  a  link.  In  this  picture  she  bravely 
took  her  place.  'It  was  the  23rd.' 

'Then  can't  you  get  it  this  morning — or 
some  time  to-day?' 

She  considered,  still  holding  him  with  her 
look,  which  she  then  turned  on  her  two 
companions,  who  were  by  this  time  unre 
servedly  enlisted.  She  didn't  care — not  a 
scrap,  and  she  glanced  about  for  a  piece  of 
paper.  With  this  she  had  to  recognize  the 
rigour  of  official  thrift — a  morsel  of  black 
ened  blotter  was  the  only  loose  paper  to  be 
seen.  'Have  you  got  a  card?'  she  said  to 
her  visitor.  He  was  quite  away  from  Pad- 
dington  now,  and  the  next  instant,  with  a 
pocket-pook  in  his  hand,  he  had  whipped  a 
card  out.  She  gave  no  glance  at  the  name 
on  it — only  turned  it  to  the  other  side.  She 
continued  to  hold  him,  she  felt  at  present,  as 
she  had  never  held  him ;  and  her  command 
of  her  colleagues  was,  for  the  moment,  not 
less  marked.  She  wrote  something  on  the 
back  of  the  card  and  pushed  it  across  to  him. 


i92  IN  THE  CAGE 

He  fairly  glared  at  it.  'Seven,  nine, 
four ' 

'Nine,  six,  one' — she  obligingly  completed 
the  number.  'Is  it  right?'  she  smiled. 

He  took  the  whole  thing  in  with  a  flushed 
intensity;  then  there  broke  out  in  him  a 
visibility  of  relief  that  was  simply  a  tremen 
dous  exposure.  He  shone  at  them  all  like 
a  tall  lighthouse,  embracing  even,  for  sym 
pathy,  the  blinking  young  man.  'By  all  the 
powers — it's  wrong!'  And  without  another 
look,  without  a  word  of  thanks,  without 
time  for  anything  or  anybody,  he  turned  on 
them  the  broad  back  of  his  great  stature, 
straightened  his  triumphant  shoulders  and 
strode  out  of  the  place. 

She  was  left  confronted  with  her  habitual 
critics.  '  "If  it's  wrong  it's  all  right!"  '  she 
extravagantly  quoted  to  them. 

The  counter-clerk  was  really  awe-stricken. 
'But  how  did  you  know,  dear?' 

'I  remembered,  love!' 

Mr.  Buckton,  on  the  contrary,  was  rude. 
'And  what  game  is  that,  Miss?' 


IN  THE  CAGE  193 

No  happiness  she  had  ever  known  came 
within  miles  of  it,  and  some  minutes  elapsed 
before  she  could  recall  herself  sufficiently 
to  reply  that  it  was  none  of  his  business. 


XXIV 

If  life  at  Cocker's  with  the  dreadful  drop 
of  August,  had  lost  something  of  its  savour, 
she  had  not  been  slow  to  infer  that  a  heavier 
blight  had  fallen  on  the  graceful  industry  of 
Mrs.  Jordan.  With  Lord  Rye  and  Lady 
Ventnor  and  Mrs.  Bubb  all  out  of  town, 
with  the  blinds  down  on  all  the  homes  of 
luxury,  this  ingenious  woman  might  well 
have  found  her  wonderful  taste  left  quite  on 
her  hands.  She  bore  up,  however,  in  a  way 
that  began  by  exciting  much  of  her  young 
friend's  esteem;  they  perhaps  even  more 
frequently  met  as  the  wine  of  life  flowed 
less  free  from  other  sources,  and  each,  in 
the  lack  of  better  diversion,  carried  on  with 
more  mystification  for  the  other  an  inter 
course  that  consisted  not  a  little  of  peeping 
out  and  drawing  back.  Each  waited  for 
the  other  to  commit  herself,  each  profusely 

curtained   for   the   other   the  limits  of  low 
195 


196  IN  THE  CAGE 

horizons.  Mrs.  Jordan  was  indeed  probably 
the  more  reckless  skirmisher ;  nothing  could 
exceed  her  frequent  incoherence  unless  it 
was  indeed  her  occasional  bursts  of  con 
fidence.  Her  account  of  her  private  affairs 
rose  and  fell  like  a  flame  in  the  wind — 
sometimes  the  bravest  bonfire  and  some 
times  a  handful  of  ashes.  This  our  young 
woman  took  to  be  an  effect  of  the  position, 
at  one  moment  and  another,  of  the  famous 
door  of  the  great  world.  She  had  been 
struck  in  one  of  her  ha'penny  volumes  with 
the  translation  of  a  French  proverb  accord 
ing  to  which  a  door  had  to  be  either  open  or 
shut;  and  it  seemed  a  part  of  the  precari- 
ousness  of  Mrs.  Jordan's  life  that  hers  mostly 
managed  to  be  neither.  There  had  been 
occasions  when  it  appeared  to  gape  wide — 
fairly  to  woo  her  across  its  threshold ;  there 
had  been  others,  of  an  order  distinctly  dis 
concerting,  when  it  was  all  but  banged  in 
her  face.  On  the  whole,  however,  she  had 
evidently  not  lost  heart ;  these  still  belonged 
to  the  class  of  things  in  spite  of  which  she 


IN  THE  CAGE  197 

looked  well.  She  intimated  that  the  profits 
of  her  trade  had  swollen  so  as  to  float  her 
through  any  state  of  the  tide,  and  she  had, 
besides  this,  a  hundred  profundities  and 
explanations. 

She  rose  superior,  above  all,  on  the  happy 
fact  that  there  were  always  gentlemen  in 
town  and  that  gentlemen  were  her  greatest 
admirers  ;  gentlemen  from  the  city  in 
especial — as  to  whom  she  was  full  of  in 
formation  about  the  passion  and  pride 
excited  in  such  breasts  by  the  objects  of 
her  charming  commerce.  The  city  men 
did,  in  short,  go  in  for  flowers.  There 
was  a  certain  type  of  awfully  smart  stock 
broker — Lord  Rye  called  them  Jews  and 
'bounders,'  but  she  didn't  care — whose 
extravagance,  she  more  than  once  threw 
out,  had  really,  if  one  had  any  conscience, 
to  be  forcibly  restrained.  It  was  not  per 
haps  a  pure  love  of  beauty :  it  was  a  matter 
of  vanity  and  a  sign  of  business;  they 
wished  to  crush  their  rivals,  and  that  was 
one  of  their  weapons.  Mrs.  Jordan's 


198  IN  THE  CAGE 

shrewdness  was  extreme ;  she  knew,  in  any 
case,  her  customer — she  dealt,  as  she  said, 
with  all  sorts;  and  it  was,  at  the  worst,  a 
race  for  her — a  race  even  in  the  dull  months 
— from  one  set  of  chambers  to  another.  And 
then,  after  all,  there  were  also  still  the 
ladies;  the  ladies  of  stockbroking  circles 
were  perpetually  up  and  down.  They  were 
not  quite  perhaps  Mrs.  Bubb  or  Lady  Vent- 
nor;  but  you  couldn't  tell  the  difference 
unless  you  quarrelled  with  them,  and  then 
you  knew  it  only  by  their  making  up  sooner. 
These  ladies  formed  the  branch  of  her  sub 
ject  on  which  she  most  swayed  in  the  breeze ; 
to  that  degree  that  her  confidant  had  ended 
with  an  inference  or  two  tending  to  banish 
regret  for  opportunities  not  embraced. 
There  were  indeed  tea  -  gowns  that  Mrs. 
Jordan  described — but  tea-gowns  were  not 
the  whole  of  respectability,  and  it  was  odd 
that  a  clergyman's  widow  should  sometimes 
speak  as  if  she  almost  thought  so.  She 
came  back,  it  was  true,  unfailingly,  to  Lord 
Rye,  never,  evidently,  quite  losing  sight  of 


IN  THE  CAGE  199 

him  even  on  the  longest  excursions.  That 
he  was  kindness  itself  had  become  in  fact 
the  very  moral  it  all  pointed — pointed  in 
strange  flashes  of  the  poor  woman's  near 
sighted  eyes.  She  launched  at  her  young 
friend  many  portentous  looks,  solemn 
heralds  of  some  extraordinary  communica 
tion.  The  communication  itself,  from  week 
to  week,  hung  fire ;  but  it  was  to  the  facts 
over  which  it  hovered  that  she  owed  her 
power  of  going  on.  'They  are,  in  one  way 
and  another,'  she  often  emphasised,  'a  tower 
of  strength';  and  as  the  allusion  was  to  the 
aristocracy  the  girl  could  quite  wonder  why, 
if  they  were  so  in  'one'  way,  they  should 
require  to  be  so  in  two.  She  thoroughly 
knew,  however,  how  many  ways  Mrs.  Jordan 
counted  in.  It  all  meant  simply  that  her 
fate  was  pressing  her  close.  If  that  fate 
was  to  be  sealed  at  the  matrimonial  altar 
it  was  perhaps  not  remarkable  that  she 
shouldn't  come  all  at  once  to  the  scratch  of 
overwhelming  a  mere  telegraphist.  It 
would  necessarily  present  to  such  a  person 


200  IN  THE  CAGE 

a  prospect  of  regretful  sacrifice.  Lord  Rye 
• — if  it  was  Lord  Rye — wouldn't  be  'kind'  to 
a  nonentity  of  that  sort,  even  though  people 
quite  as  good  had  been. 

One  Sunday  afternoon  in  November  they 
went,  by  arrangement,  to  church  together; 
after  which — on  the  inspiration  of  the  mo 
ment  ;  the  arrangement  had  not  included  it — 
they  proceeded  to  Mrs.  Jordan's  lodging  in 
the  region  of  Maida  Vale.  She  had  raved  to 
her  friend  about  her  service  of  predilection ; 
she  was  excessively  'high'  and  had  more 
than  once  wished  to  introduce  the  girl  to  the 
same  comfort  and  privilege.  There  was  a 
thick  brown  fog,  and  Maida  Vale  tasted  of 
acrid  smoke;  but  they  had  been  sitting 
among  chants  and  incense  and  wonderful 
music,  during  which,  though  the  effect  of 
such  things  on  her  mind  was  great,  our 
young  lady  had  indulged  in  a  series  of 
reflections  but  indirectly  related  to  them. 
One  of  these  was  the  result  of  Mrs.  Jordan's 
having  said  to  her  on  the  way,  and  with  a 
certain  fine  significance,  that  Lord  Rye  had 


IN  THE  CAGE  201 

been  for  some  time  in  town.  She  had 
spoken  as  if  it  were  a  circumstance  to  which 
little  required  to  be  added — as  if  the  bearing 
of  such  an  item  on  her  life  might  easily  be 
grasped.  Perhaps  it  was  the  wonder  of 
whether  Lord  Rye  wished  to  marry  her  that 
made  her  guest,  with  thoughts  straying  to 
that  quarter,  quite  determine  that  some 
other  nuptials  also  should  take  place  at  St. 
Julian's.  Mr.  Mudge  was  still  an  attendant 
at  his  Wesleyan  chapel,  but  this  was  the 
least  of  her  worries — it  had  never  even 
vexed  her  enough  for  her  to  so  much  as 
name  it  to  Mrs.  Jordan.  Mr.  Mudge's  form 
of  worship  was  one  of  several  things — they 
made  up  in  superiority  and  beauty  for  what 
they  wanted  in  number — that  she  had  long 
ago  settled  he  should  take  from  her,  and 
she  had  now  moreover  for  the  first  time 
definitely  established  her  own.  Its  princi 
pal  feature  was  that  it  was  to  be  the  same 
as  that  of  Mrs.  Jordan  and  Lord  Rye ;  which 
was  indeed  very  much  what  she  said  to  her 
hostess  as  they  sat  together  later  on.  The 


202  IN  THE  CAGE 

brown  fog  was  in  this  hostess's  little  par 
lour,  where  it  acted  as  a  postponement  of 
the  question  of  there  being,  besides,  any 
thing  else  than  the  teacups  and  a  pewter 
pot,  and  a  very  black  little  fire,  and  a 
paraffin  lamp  without  a  shade.  There  was  at 
any  rate  no  sign  of  a  flower;  it  was  not  for 
herself  Mrs.  Jordan  gathered  sweets.  The 
girl  waited  till  they  had  had  a  cup  of  tea — 
waited  for  the  announcement  that  she  fairly 
believed  her  friend  had,  this  time,  possessed 
herself  of  her  formally  at  last  to  make ;  but 
nothing  came,  after  the  interval,  save  a  little 
poke  at  the  fire,  which  was  like  the  clearing 
of  the  throat  for  a  speech. 


XXV 

'  I  think  you  must  have  heard  me  speak 
of  Mr.  Drake  ?'  Mrs.  Jordan  had  never 
looked  so  queer,  nor  her  smile  so  suggestive 
of  a  large  benevolent  bite. 

'Mr.  Drake?  Oh  yes;  isn't  he  a  friend  of 
Lord  Rye?' 

'A  great  and  trusted  friend.  Almost — I 
may  say — a  loved  friend.' 

Mrs.  Jordan's  'almost'  had  such  an  oddity 
that  her  companion  was  moved,  rather  flip 
pantly  perhaps,  to  take  it  up.  'Don't  people 
as  good  as  love  their  friends  when  they 
"trust"  them?' 

It  pulled  up  a  little  the  eulogist  of  Mr. 
Drake.  'Well,  my  dear,  I  love  you ' 

'But  you  don't  trust  me?'  the  girl  unmer 
cifully  asked. 

Again  Mrs.  Jordan  paused  —  still  she 
looked  queer.  'Yes,'  she  replied  with  a  cer 
tain  austerity  ;  'that's  exactly  what  I'm 


204  IN  THE  CAGE 

about  to  give  you  rather  a  remarkable  proof 
of. '  The  sense  of  its  being  remarkable  was 
already  so  strong  that,  while  she  bridled  a 
little,  this  held  her  auditor  in  a  momentary 
muteness  of  submission.  'Mr.  Drake  has 
rendered  his  lordship,  for  several  years, 
services  that  his  lordship  has  highly  appre 
ciated  and  that  make  it  all  the  more — a — 
unexpected  that  they  should,  perhaps  a  little 
suddenly,  separate.' 

'Separate?'  Our  young  lady  was  mysti 
fied,  but  she  tried  to  be  interested ;  and  she 
already  saw  that  she  had  put  the  saddle  on 
the  wrong  horse.  She  had  heard  something 
of  Mr.  Drake,  who  was  a  member  of  his 
lordship's  circle — the  member  with  whom, 
apparently,  Mrs.  Jordan's  avocations  had 
most  happened  to  throw  her.  She  was  only 
a  little  puzzled  at  the  'separation.'  'Well, 
at  any  rate,'  she  smiled,  'if  they  separate  as 
friends !' 

'Oh,  his  lordship  takes  the  greatest 
interest  in  Mr.  Drake's  future.  He'll  do 
anything  for  him ;  he  has,  in  fact,  just  done 


IN  THE  CAGE  205 

a  great  deal.  There  must,  you  know,  be 
changes — ! ' 

'No  one  knows  it  better  than  I,'  the  girl 
said.  She  wished  to  draw  her  interlocutress 
out.  'There  will  be  changes  enough  for 
me.' 

'You're  leaving  Cocker's?' 

The  ornament  of  that  establishment 
waited  a  moment  to  answer,  and  then  it 
was  indirect.  'Tell  me  what  you're  doing.' 

'Well,  what  will  you  think  of  it?' 

'Why,  that  you've  found  the  opening  you 
were  always  so  sure  of. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan,  on  this,  appeared  to  muse 
with  embarrassed  intensity.  'I  was  always 
sure,  yes — and  yet  I  often  wasn't!' 

'Well,  I  hope  you're  sure  now.  Sure,  I 
mean,  of  Mr.  Drake. ' 

'Yes,  my  dear,  I  think  I  may  say  I  am. 
I  kept  him  going  till  I  was. ' 

'Then  he's  yours?' 

'  My  very  own. ' 

'  How  nice !  And  awfully  rich ! '  our  young 
woman  went  on. 


2o6  IN  THE  CAGE 

Mrs.  Jordan  showed  promptly  enough 
that  she  loved  for  higher  things.  'Awfully 
handsome — six  foot  two.  And  he  has  put  by. ' 

'Quite  like  Mr.  Mudge,  then!'  that  gentle 
man's  friend  rather  desperately  exclaimed. 

'Oh,  not  quite!'  Mr.  Drake's  was  ambigu 
ous  about  it,  but  the  name  of  Mr.  Mudge  had 
evidently  given  her  some  sort  of  stimulus. 
'He'll  have  more  opportunity  now,  at  any 
rate.  He's  going  to  Lady  Bradeen.' 

'To  Lady  Bradeen?'  This  was  bewilder 
ment.  '  "Going ?"  ' 

The  girl  had  seen,  from  the  way  Mrs. 
Jordan  looked  at  her,  that  the  effect  of  the 
name  had  been  to  make  her  let  something 
out.  'Do  you  know  her?' 

She  hesitated;  then  she  found  her  feet. 

'Well,  you'll  remember  I've  often  told 
you  that  if  you  had  grand  clients,  I  have 
them  too. ' 

'Yes,'  said  Mrs.  Jordan;  'but  the  great 
difference  is  that  you  hate  yours,  whereas  I 
really  love  mine.  Do  you  know  Lady 
Bradeen?'  she  pursued. 


IN  THE  CAGE  207 

'Down  to  the  ground!  She's  always  in 
and  out. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan's  foolish  eyes  confessed,  in 
fixing  themselves  on  this  sketch,  to  a  degree 
of  wonder  and  even  of  envy.  But  she  bore 
up  and,  with  a  certain  gaiety,  '  Do  you  hate 
her?'  she  demanded. 

Her  visitor's  reply  was  prompt.  'Dear 
no — not  nearly  so  much  as  some  of  them. 
She's  too  outrageously  beautiful.' 

Mrs.  Jordan  continued  to  gaze.  'Out 
rageously?' 

'Well,  yes;  deliciously. '  What  was  really 
delicious  was  Mrs.  Jordan's  vagueness. 
'You  don't  know  her — you've  not  seen  her?' 
her  guest  lightly  continued. 

'No,  but  I've  heard  a  great  deal  about 
her.' 

'So  have  I  !'  our  young  lady  exclaimed. 

Mrs.  Jordan  looked  an  instant  as  if  she 
suspected  her  good  faith,  or  at  least  her 
seriousness.  'You  know  some  friend ?' 

'Of  Lady  Bradeen's?  Oh,  yes,  I  know  one.' 

'Only  one?' 


208  IN  THE  CAGE 

The  girl  laughed  out.  'Only  one  —  but 
he's  so  intimate. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan  just  hesitated.  'He's  a  gen 
tleman?' 

'Yes,  he's  not  a  lady.' 

Her  interlocutress  appeared  to  muse. 
'She's  immensely  surrounded.' 

'She  will  be— with  Mr.  Drake!' 

Mrs.  Jordan's  gaze  became  strangely  fixed. 
'Is  she  very  good-looking?' 

'The  handsomest  person  I  know.' 

Mrs.  Jordan  continued  to  contemplate. 
'Well,  /know  some  beauties.'  Then,  with 
her  odd  jerkiness,  'Do  you  think  she  looks 
good?'  she  inquired. 

'Because  that's  not  always  the  case  with 
the  good-looking?' — the  other  took  it  up. 
'No,  indeed,  it  isn't:  that's  one  thing  Cock 
er's  has  taught  me.  Still,  there  are  some 
people  who  have  everything.  Lady  Bra- 
deen,  at  any  rate,  has  enough:  eyes  and  a 
nose  and  a  mouth,  a  complexion,  a  figure — ' 

'A  figure?'  Mrs.  Jordan  almost  broke  in. 

'A  figure,  a  head  of  hair!'    The  girl  made 


IN  THE  CAGE  209 

a  little  conscious  motion  that  seemed  to  let 
the  hair  all  down,  and  her  companion 
watched  the  wonderful  show.  'But  Mr. 
Drake  is  another ?' 

'Another?' — Mrs.  Jordan's  thoughts  had 
to  come  back  from  a  distance. 

'Of  her  ladyship's  admirers.  He's  "go 
ing,"  you  say,  to  her?' 

At  this  Mrs.  Jordan  really  faltered.  'She 
has  engaged  him. ' 

'Engaged  him?' — our  young  woman  was 
quite  at  sea. 

'In  the  same  capacity  as  Lord  Rye.' 

'And  was  Lord  Rye  engaged?' 


XXVI 

Mrs.  Jordan  looked  away  from  her  now — 
looked,  she  thought,  rather  injured  and,  as 
if  trifled  with,  even  a  little  angry.  The 
mention  of  Lady  Bradeen  had  frustrated 
for  a  while  the  convergence  of  our  heroine's 
thoughts;  but  with  this  impression  of  her 
old  friend's  combined  impatience  and  diffi 
dence  they  began  again  to  whirl  round  her, 
and  continued  it  till  one  of  them  appeared 
to  dart  at  her,  out  of  the  dance,  as  if  with 
a  sharp  peck.  It  came  to  her  with  a  lively 
shock,  with  a  positive  sting,  that  Mr.  Drake 
was — could  it  be  possible?  With  the  idea 
she  found  herself  afresh  on  the  edge  of 
laughter,  of  a  sudden  and  strange  perversity 
of  mirth.  Mr.  Drake  loomed,  in  a  swift 
image,  before  her ;  such  a  figure  as  she  had 
seen  in  open  doorways  of  houses  in  Cock 
er's  quarter — majestic,  middle-aged,  erect, 
flanked  on  either  side  by  a  footman  and 


212  IN  THE  CAGE 

taking  the  name  of  a  visitor.  Mr.  Drake 
then  verily  was  a  person  who  opened  the 
door!  Before  she  had  time,  however,  to 
recover  from  the  effect  of  her  evocation, 
she  was  offered  a  vision  which  quite  en 
gulfed  it.  It  was  communicated  to  her 
somehow  that  the  face  with  which  she  had 
seen  it  rise  prompted  Mrs.  Jordan  to  dash,  at 
a  venture,  at  something  that  might  attenu 
ate  criticism.  'Lady  Bradeen  is  rearranging 
— she's  going  to  be  married.' 

'Married?'  The  girl  echoed  it  ever  so 
soltly,  but  there  it  was  at  last.  'Didn't  you 
know  it?' 

She  summoned  all  her  sturdiness.  'No, 
she  hasn't  told  me. ' 

'And  her  friends — haven't  they?' 

'I  haven't  seen  any  of  them  lately.  I'm 
not  so  fortunate  as  you. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan  gathered  herself.  'Then  you 
haven't  even  heard  of  Lord  Bradeen's 
death?' 

Her  comrade,  unable  for  a  moment  to 
speak,  gave  a  slow  headshake.  'You  know 


IN  THE  CAGE  213 

it  from  Mr.  Drake?'  It  was  better  surely 
not  to  learn  things  at  all  than  to  learn  them 
by  the  butler.  '  She  tells  him  everything. ' 

'And  he  tells  yon — I  see.'  Our  young  lady 
got  up ;  recovering  her  muff  and  her  gloves, 
she  smiled.  'Well,  I  haven't,  unfortunately, 
any  Mr.  Drake.  I  congratulate  you  with  all 
my  heart.  Even  without  your  sort  of  assist 
ance,  however,  there's  a  trifle  here  and  there 
that  I  do  pick  up.  I  gather  that  if  she's  to 
marry  any  one,  it  must  quite  necessarily  be 
my  friend.' 

Mrs.  Jordan  was  now  also  on  her  feet. 
'Is  Captain  Everard  your  friend?' 

The  girl  considered,  drawing  on  a  glove. 
'  I  saw  at  one  time  an  immense  deal  of  him. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan  looked  hard  at  the  glove,  but 
she  had  not,  after  all,  waited  for  that  to  be 
sorry  it  was  not  cleaner.  'What  time  was 
that?' 

'It  must  have  been  the  time  you  were 
seeing  so  much  of  Mr.  Drake.'  She  had 
now  fairly  taken  it  in:  the  distinguished 
person  Mrs,  Jordan  was  to  marry  would 


214  IN  THE  CAGE 

answer  bells  and  put  on  coals  and  superin 
tend,  at  least,  the  cleaning  of  boots  for  the 
other  distinguished  person  whom  she  might 
— well,  whom  she  might  have  had,  if  she  had 
wished,  so  much  more  to  say  to.  'Good 
bye,'  she  added;  'good-bye.' 

Mrs.  Jordan,  however,  again  taking  her 
muff  from  her,  turned  it  over,  brushed  it  off 
and  thoughtfully  peeped  into  it.  'Tell  me 
this  before  you  go.  You  spoke  just  now  of 
your  own  changes.  Do  you  mean  that  Mr. 
Mudge ?' 

'Mr.  Mudge  has  had  great  patience  with 
me — he  has  brought  me  at  last  to  the  point. 
We're  to  be  married  next  month  and  have  a 
nice  little  home.  But  he's  only  a  grocer, 
you  know' — the  girl  met  her  friend's  intent 
eyes — 'so  that  I'm  afraid  that,  with  the  set 
you've  got  into,  you  won't  see  your  way  to 
keep  up  our  friendship. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan  for  a  moment  made  no  answer 
to  this ;  she  only  held  the  muff  up  to  her 
face,  after  which  she  gave  it  back.  'You 
don't  like  it.  I  see,  I  see.' 


IN  THE  CAGE  215 

To  her  guest's  astonishment  there  were 
tears  now  in  her  eyes.  'I  don't  like  what?' 
the  girl  asked. 

'Why,  my  engagement.  Only,  with  your 
great  cleverness, '  the  poor  lady  quavered 
out,  'you  put  it  in  your  own  way.  I  mean 

that  you'll  cool  off.  You  already  have !' 

And  on  this,  the  next  instant,  her  tears 
began  to  flow.  She  succumbed  to  them  and 
collapsed;  she  sank  down  again,  burying 
her  face  and  trying  to  smother  her  sobs. 

Her  young  friend  stood  there,  still  in  some 
rigour,  but  taken  much  by  surprise  even  if 
not  yet  fully  moved  to  pity.  'I  don't  put 
anything  in  any  "way,"  and  I'm  very  glad 
you're  suited.  Only,  you  know,  you  did  put 
to  me  so  splendidly  what,  even  for  me,  if  I 
had  listened  to  you,  it  might  lead  to. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan  kept  up  a  mild,  thin,  weak 
wail ;  then,  drying  her  eyes,  as  feebly  con 
sidered  this  reminder.  'It  has  led  to  my 
not  starving!'  she  faintly  gasped. 

Our  young  lady,  at  this,  dropped  into  the 
place  beside  her,  and  now,  in  a  rush,  the 


216  IN  THE  CAGE 

small,  silly  misery  was  clear.  She  took  her 
hand  as  a  sign  of  pitying  it,  then,  after 
another  instant,  confirmed  this  expression 
with  a  consoling  kiss.  They  sat  there 
together;  they  looked  out,  hand  in  hand, 
into  the  damp,  dusky,  shabby  little  room 
and  into  the  future,  of  no  such  very  different 
suggestion,  at  last  accepted  by  each.  There 
was  no  definite  utterance,  on  either  side,  of 
Mr.  Drake's  position  in  the  great  world,  but 
the  temporary  collapse  of  his  prospective 
bride  threw  all  further  necessary  light ;  and 
what  our  heroine  saw  and  felt  for  in  the 
whole  business  was  the  vivid  reflection  of 
her  own  dreams  and  delusions  and  her  own 
return  to  reality.  Reality,  for  the  poor 
things  they  both  were,  could  only  be  ugli 
ness  and  obscurity,  could  never  be  the 
escape,  the  rise.  She  pressed  her  friend — 
she  had  tact  enough  for  that — with  no  other 
personal  question,  brought  on  no  need  of 
further  revelations,  only  just  continued  to 
hold  and  comfort  her  and  to  acknowledge 
by  stiff  little  forbearances  the  common 


IN  THE  CAGE  217 

element  in  their  fate.  She  felt  indeed  mag 
nanimous  in  such  matters;  for  if  it  was  very 
well,  for  condolence  or  reassurance,  to 
suppress  just  then  invidious  shrinkings, 
she  yet  by  no  means  saw  herself  sitting 
down,  as  she  might  say,  to  the  same  table 
with  Mr.  Drake.  There  would  luckily,  to 
all  appearance,  be  little  question  of  tables; 
and  the  circumstance  that,  on  their  peculiar 
lines,  her  friend's  interests  would  still  attach 
themselves  to  Mayfair  flung  over  Chalk 
Farm  the  first  radiance  it  had  shown.  Where 
was  one's  pride  and  one's  passion  when  the 
real  way  to  judge  of  one's  luck  was  by 
making  not  the  wrong,  but  the  right,  com 
parison?  Before  she  had  again  gathered 
herself  to  go  she  felt  very  small  and  cautious 
and  thankful.  'We  shall  have  our  own 
house,'  she  said,  'and  you  must  come  very 
soon  and  let  me  show  it  you. ' 

'  We  shall  have  our  own  too, '  Mrs.  Jordan 
replied;  'for,  don't  you  know,  he  makes  it 
a  condition  that  he  sleeps  out?' 

'A  condition?' — the  girl  felt  out  of  it. 


2i8  IN  THE  CAGE 

'  For  any  new  position.  It  was  on  that  he 
parted  with  Lord  Rye.  His  lordship  can't 
meet  it;  so  Mr.  Drake  has  given  him  up.' 

'And  all  for  you?' — our  young  woman  put 
it  as  cheerfully  as  possible. 

'For  me  and  Lady  Bradeen.  Her  Lady 
ship's  too  glad  to  get  him  at  any  price.  Lord 
Rye,  out  of  interest  in  us,  has  in  fact  quite 
made  her  take  him.  So,  as  I  tell  you,  he 
will  have  his  own  establishment. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan,  in  the  elation  of  it,  had 
begun  to  revive ;  but  there  was  nevertheless 
between  them  rather  a  conscious  pause — a 
pause  in  which  neither  visitor  nor  hostess 
brought  out  a  hope  or  an  invitation.  It 
expressed  in  the  last  resort  that,  in  spite  of 
submission  and  sympathy,  they  could  now, 
after  all,  only  look  at  each  other  across  the 
social  gulf.  They  remained  together  as  if 
it  would  be  indeed  their  last  chance,  still 
sitting,  though  awkwardly,  quite  close,  and 
feeling  also — and  this  most  unmistakably — 
that  there  was  one  thing  more  to  go  into. 
By  the  time  it  came  to  the  surface,  more- 


IN  THE  CAGE  219 

over,  our  young  friend  had  recognized  the 
whole  of  the  main  truth,  from  which  she 
even  drew  again  a  slight  irritation.  It  was 
not  the  main  truth  perhaps  that  most  signi 
fied;  but  after  her  momentary  effort,  her 
embarrassment  and  her  tears,  Mrs.  Jordan 
had  begun  to  sound  afresh  —  and  even 
without  speaking — the  note  of  a  social  con 
nection.  She  hadn't  really  let  go  of  it  that 
she  was  marrying  into  society.  Well,  it  was 
a  harmless  compensation,  and  it  was  all  that 
the  prospective  bride  of  Mr.  Mudge  had  to 
leave  with  her. 


XXVII 

This  young  lady  at  last  rose  again,  but 
she  lingered  before  going.  'And  has  Captain 
Everard  nothing  to  say  to  it?' 

'To  what,  dear?' 

'Why,  to  such  questions  —  the  domestic 
arrangements,  things  in  the  house. ' 

'How  can  he,  with  any  authority,  when 
nothing  in  the  house  is  his?' 

'Not  his?'  The  girl  wondered,  perfectly 
conscious  of  the  appearance  she  thus  con 
ferred  on  Mrs.  Jordan  of  knowing,  in 
comparison  with  herself,  so  tremendously 
much  about  it.  Well,  there  were  things  she 
wanted  so  to  get  at  that  she  was  willing  at 
last,  though  it  hurt  her,  to  pay  for  them 
with  humiliation.  'Why  are  they  not  his?' 

'Don't  you  know,  dear,  that  he  has 
nothing?' 

'Nothing?'  It  was  hard  to  see  him  in  such 
a  light,  but  Mrs.  Jordan's  power  to  answer 


222  IN  THE  CAGE 

for  it  had  a  superiority  that  began,  on  the 
spot,  to  grow.  'Isn't  he  rich?' 

Mrs.  Jordan  looked  immensely,  looked 
both  generally  and  particularly,  informed. 

4  It  depends  upon  what  you  call !  Not, 

at  any  rate,  in  the  least  as  she  is.  What 
does  he  bring?  Think  what  she  has.  And 
then,  my  love,  his  debts. ' 

'His  debts?'  His  young  friend  was  fairly 
betrayed  into  helpless  innocence.  She  could 
struggle  a  little,  but  she  had  to  let  herself 
go ;  and  if  she  had  spoken  frankly  she  would 
have  said:  'Do  tell  me,  for  I  don't  know 
so  much  about  him  as  that!'  As  she  didn't 
speak  frankly  she  only  said:  'His  debts  are 
nothing — when  she  so  adores  him. ' 

Mrs.  Jordan  began  to  fix  her  again,  and 
now  she  saw  that  she  could  only  take  it  all. 
That  was  what  it  had  come  to ;  his  having 
sat  with  her  there,  on  the  bench  and  under 
the  trees,  in  the  summer  darkness  and  put 
his  hand  on  her,  making  her  know  what  he 
would  have  said  if  permitted;  his  having 
returned  to  her  afterwards,  repeatedly,  with 


IN  THE  CAGE  223 

supplicating  eyes  and  a  fever  in  his  blood ;  and 
her  having,  on  her  side,  hard  and  pedantic, 
helped  by  some  miracle  and  with  her  impos 
sible  condition,  only  answered  him,  yet 
supplicating  back,  through  the  bars  of  the 
cage — all  simply  that  she  might  hear  of  him, 
now  forever  lost,  only  through  Mrs.  Jordan, 
who  touched  him  through  Mr.  Drake,  who 
reached  him  through  Lady  Bradeen.  'She 
adores  him — but  of  course  that  wasn't  all 
there  was  about  it. ' 

The  girl  met  her  eyes  a  minute,  then 
quite  surrendered.  'What  was  there  else 
about  it?' 

'Why,  don't  you  know?' — Mrs.  Jordan  was 
almost  compassionate. 

Her  interlocutress  had,  in  the  cage, 
sounded  depths,  but  there  was  a  suggestion 
here  somehow  of  an  abyss  quite  measureless. 
'Of  course  I  know  that  she  would  never  let 
him  alone.' 

'  How  could  she — fancy ! — when  he  had  so 
compromised  her?' 

The  most  artless  cry  they  had  ever  uttered 


224  1N  THE  CAGE 

broke,  at  this,  from  the  younger  pair  of  lips. 
'Had  he  so ?' 

'Why,  don't  you  know  the  scandal?' 

Our  heroine  thought,  recollected;  there 
was  something,  whatever  it  was,  that  she 
knew,  after  all,  much  more  of  than  Mrs. 
Jordan.  She  saw  him  again  as  she  had  seen 
him  come  that  morning  to  recover  the  tele 
gram — she  saw  him  as  she  had  seen  him  leave 
the  shop.  She  perched  herself  a  moment 
on  this.  'Oh,  there  was  nothing  public. ' 

'Not  exactly  public — no.  But  there  was 
an  awful  scare  and  an  awful  row.  It  was  all 
on  the  very  point  of  coming  out.  Some 
thing  was  lost — something  was  found. ' 

'Ah,  yes,'  the  girl  replied,  smiling  as  if 
with  the  revival  of  a  blurred  memory; 
'something  was  found.' 

'  It  all  got  about — and  there  was  a  point 
at  which  Lord  Bradeen  had  to  act. ' 

'Had  to — yes.     But  he  didn't.' 

Mrs.  Jordan  was  obliged  to  admit  it. 
'No,  he  didn't.  And  then,  luckily  for  them, 
he  died.' 


IN  THE  CAGE  225 

'I  didn't  know  about  his  death,'  her  com 
panion  said. 

'It  was  nine  weeks  ago,  and  most  sudden. 
It  has  given  them  a  prompt  chance. ' 

'To  get  married' — this  was  a  wonder — 
'within  nine  weeks?' 

'Oh,  not  immediately,  but — in  all  the  cir 
cumstances — very  quietly  and,  I  assure  you, 
very  soon.  Every  preparation's  made. 
Above  all,  she  holds  him. ' 

'Oh  yes,  she  holds  him!'  our  young  friend 
threw  off.  She  had  this  before  her  again  a 
minute;  then  she  continued:  'You  mean 
through  his  having  made  her  talked  about?' 

'Yes,  but  not  only  that.  She  has  still 
another  pull.' 

'Another?' 

Mrs.  Jordan  hesitated.  'Why,  he  was 
in  something.' 

Her  comrade  wondered.     'In  what?' 

'I  don't  know.  Something  bad.  As  I 
tell  you,  something  was  found.' 

The  girl  stared.     'Well5' 

'It  would  have  been  very  bad  for  him. 


226  IN  THE  CAGE 

But  she  helped  him  some  way — she  recov 
ered  it,  got  hold  of  it.  It's  even  said  she 
stole  it!' 

Our  young  woman  considered  afresh. 
'Why,  it  was  what  was  found  that  precisely 
saved  him.' 

Mrs.  Jordan,  however,  was  positive.  'I 
beg  your  pardon.  I  happen  to  know. ' 

Her  disciple  faltered  but  an  instant.  'Do 
you  mean  through  Mr.  Drake?  Do  they 
tell  him  these  things?' 

'A  good  servant,'  said  Mrs.  Jordan,  now 
thoroughly  superior  and  proportionately 
sententious,  'doesn't  need  to  be  told!  Her 
ladyship  saved — as  a  woman  so  often  saves ! 
— the  man  she  loves. ' 

This  time  our  heroine  took  longer  to 
recover  herself,  but  she  found  a  voice  at 
last.  'Ah,  well — of  course  I  don't  know! 
The  great  thing  was  that  he  got  off.  They 
seem,  then,  in  a  manner,'  she  added,  'to 
have  done  a  great  deal  for  each  other. ' 

'Well,  it's  she  that  has  done  most.  She 
has  him  tight. ' 


IN  THE  CAGE  227 

'I  see,  I  see.  Good-bye.'  The  women 
had  already  embraced,  and  this  was  not 
repeated ;  but  Mrs.  Jordan  went  down  with 
her  guest  to  the  door  of  the  house.  Here 
again  the  younger  lingered,  reverting, 
though  three  or  four  other  remarks  had 
on  the  way  passed  between  them,  to  Captain 
Everard  and  Lady  Bradeen.  'Did  you 
mean  just  now  that  if  she  hadn't  saved  him, 
as  you  call  it,  she  wouldn't  hold  him  so 
tight?' 

'Well,  I  daresay.'  Mrs.  Jordan,  on  the 
doorstep,  smiled  with  a  reflection  that  had 
come  to  her ;  she  took  one  of  her  big  bites 
of  the  brown  gloom.  'Men  always  dislike 
one  when  they  have  done  one  an  injury. ' 

'But  what  injury  had  he  done  her?' 

'The  one  I've  mentioned.  He  must  marry 
her,  you  know.' 

'And  didn't  he  want  to?' 

'Not  before.' 

'Not  before  she  recovered  the  telegram?' 

Mrs.  Jordan  was  pulled  up  a  little.  'Was 
it  a  telegram?' 


228  IN  THE  CAGE 

The  girl  hesitated.  'I  thought  you  said 
so.  I  mean  whatever  it  was. ' 

'Yes,  whatever  it  was,  I  don't  think  she 
saw  that. ' 

'So  she  just  nailed  him?' 

'She  just  nailed  him.'  The  departing 
friend  was  now  at  the  bottom  of  the  little 
flight  of  steps;  the  other  was  at  the  top, 
with  a  certain  thickness  of  fog.  'And  when 
am  I  to  think  of  you  in  your  little  home? 
— next  month?'  asked  the  voice  from  the 
top. 

'At  the  very  latest.  And  when  am  I  to 
think  of  you  in  yours?' 

'Oh,  even  sooner.  I  feel,  after  so  much 
talk  with  you  about  it,  as  if  I  were  already 
there!'  Then  'Good-\>ye  !'  came  out  of 
the  fog. 

'Good-<5^/'  went  into  it.  Our  young  lady 
went  into  it  also,  in  the  opposed  quarter, 
and  presently,  after  a  few  sightless  turns, 
came  out  on  the  Paddington  canal.  Distin 
guishing  vaguely  what  the  low  parapet 
enclosed,  she  stopped  close  to  it  and  stood 


IN  THE  CAGE  229 

a  while,  very  intently,  but  perhaps  still 
sightlessly,  looking  down  on  it.  A  police 
man,  while  she  remained,  strolled  past  her; 
then,  going  his  way  a  little  further  and  half 
lost  in  the  atmosphere,  paused  and  watched 
her.  But  she  was  quite  unaware — she  was 
full  of  her  thoughts.  They  were  too  numer 
ous  to  find  a  place  just  here, but  two  of  the 
number  may  at  least  be  mentioned.  One  of 
these  was  that,  decidedly,  her  little  home 
must  be  not  for  next  month,  but  for  next 
week ;  the  other,  which  came  indeed  as  she 
resumed  her  walk  and  went  her  way,  was 
that  it  was  strange  such  a  matter  should  be 
at  last  settled  for  her  by  Mr.  Drake. 


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